Evidence Hub

From bench to bedside: relevant animal models across the migraine attack phases

Georgii Krivoshein, Mignon van der Watt, Teresa Jordà-Baleri, Katrin Põld, Viktor Gkotzamanis, Arn M. J. M. van den Maagdenberg, Eloísa Rubio-Beltrán, Philip Robert Holland et al.

The journal of headache and pain, 2026

Abstract

Migraine is a debilitating brain disorder for which there remains a considerable therapeutic gap that needs to be addressed in order to develop novel effective treatment options for patients. Preclinical translational models have contributed significantly to migraine research by improving our understanding of migraine pathophysiology as well as identifying and validating new drug targets. In this review, we will summarise key animal models and discuss how commonly used experimental readouts used in these models can be integrated for the investigation of the various phases of a migraine attack. A major focus is to highlight the translational potential of the experimental models and how they can help bridge the gap between preclinical research and clinical application and how increased understanding of fundamental disease mechanisms can form the basis of improved migraine treatments. Providing such a resource may inform the broader migraine research community on which model and readout they might consider when studying a specific phase of the migraine attack, when evaluating the efficacy of new possible drugs and innovative therapeutic strategies.

How strong is the evidence?

Evidence Hub reads this as a review, done in animal, not in people. Its evidence level is 5 of 5 (Very low · case / narrative / animal / in vitro / in silico). Case reports, narrative reviews, and animal, cell or computer-model studies give the weakest evidence for human health.

How the five levels of evidence work. The level is assigned automatically from the abstract and can be wrong, so check the paper.

Read the paper

Related studies

Go deeper in Evidence Hub

Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.

Open this study Sign up free