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Cluster headaches are headaches characterized by severe pain that often occurs on a side of the head or behind one eye. These headaches may last anywhere between 15 minutes to 3 hours and usually strike suddenly, often recurring more than once a day.
The pain experienced by patients is often intense and is sometimes accompanied by other symptoms such as restlessness, nasal congestion and redness in the eye.
Preliminary studies and anecdotal reports suggest that psilocybin may provide relief for this headache type. However, until now there wasn’t enough scientific evidence to back these claims.
New research has determined that psilocybin can help reduce cluster headache frequency. The study was carried out by researchers at Yale School of Medicine, led by assistant professor of neurology Emmanuelle A.D. Schindler.
The research team began by recruiting 16 adults aged between 21 and 65 years of age who got cluster headaches but had no other serious psychiatric or medical conditions. Each participant was randomly assigned to receive either a placebo or three psilocybin doses given at intervals of about five days. The psychedelic was administered in a controlled setting, with both the researchers and participants blinded to the dose administered.
In addition, each participant was required to keep a headache diary where they recorded the duration, intensity and frequency of their headaches.
The researchers discovered that the frequency of cluster headaches was substantially reduced by psilocybin, noting that participants who had received the psychedelic dose experienced an almost 50% drop in the number of headaches they experienced weekly.
On average, the researchers observed that these headaches dropped to 9.8 from 18.4, which demonstrates a significant improvement. This drop was observed in sufferers of both chronic and episodic cluster headaches. The researchers also observed that psilocybin’s therapeutic benefits appeared to be free of its hallucinogenic effects. This suggests that relief offered by the psychedelic may not be associated with its ability to alter an individual’s state of consciousness.
Additionally, the researchers observed considerable decreases in pain severity and the need for abortive drugs. In exact terms, they saw medication use drop by 37% and pain severity decrease by roughly 10%, which indicates an overall improvement in participants’ quality of life.
In their report, the researchers stated that while they observed no severe adverse events, other side effects such as cluster attacks, fatigue and nausea were observed during dosing sessions. While this study did have limitations, including a small sample size, the findings still highlight psilocybin’s potential as a treatment for cluster headaches.
The study was partly funded by Ceruvia Lifesciences and carried out under an Investigational new drug application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Other researchers who took part in the study include Deepak C. D’Souza, R. Andrew Sewell, Nicholas V. Cozzi, Christopher H. Gottschalk, Brian P. Pittman, Yutong Zhu and L. Taylor Flynn.
Other companies, such as Mind Medicine Inc. (NASDAQ: MNMD) (NEO: MMED) (DE: MMQ), are also studying psilocybin and other hallucinogens with a view to leveraging the medicinal potential of these substances. We could soon see these materials being used as mainstream treatments for ailments ranging from mental conditions to physiological issues.
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