Migraine is largely neglected
Migraine is one of the most prevalent, disabling, misdiagnosed, and undertreated disorders, and the associated economic burden to society is astronomical. Yet, migraine is a wholly misunderstood, underappreciated, and largely neglected phenomenon throughout the world. The near ubiquity, the broad public familiarity, and the perceived near‐absence of fatal complications, combined with a century of direct‐to‐consumer promotion of inexpensive but mostly ineffective over‐the counter analgesics, has reinforced an impression that migraines are only a minor problem, except for those with a low tolerance for pain.
Despite the high disease‐associated disability and socio‐economic burden, migraine is stigmatised and dismissed,1 and is dramatically underfunded, in particular when compared to other disorders which are much less frequent and are associated with less disability and socio-economic burden. For example, in relation to National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding (USA), migraine is by far the lowest funded disorder relative to disease burden―i.e., inspection of the below figure shows migraine is the largest vertical distance below the ‘Predicted Funding’ line—and is funded at approximately one-tenth to that of other disorders with similar or less disease burden!2
Migraine is similarly underfunded in the Australian context: inspection of National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) research funding data (downloaded from the NHMRC ‘Research funding statistics and data’ webpage (https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/grants-funding/research-funding-statistics-and-data, accessed 7 Nov 2016), revealed that between 2011 and 2015, the NHMRC funded 40 multiple sclerosis, 51 Parkinson’s disease and 51 epilepsy grants (identified by keyword search) totalling $27.4M, $27.3M and $39.3M, respectively; compared to just six migraine grants totalling $2.4M. Since 2016, NHMRC funding for migraine has been even more abysmal. Sadly, the global underfunding of migraine continues to this day.
References
- Shapiro RE. Lagniappe: the impact of headache disorders in America. Headache. 2013 Jan;53(1):196-204.
- Moses H 3rd, Matheson DH, Cairns-Smith S, George BP, Palisch C, Dorsey ER. The anatomy of medical research: US and international comparisons. JAMA. 2015 Jan 13;313(2):174-89.