Current and prospective pharmacological targets in relation to antimigraine action

Migraine is a recurrent incapacitating neurovascular disorder characterized by unilateral and throbbing headaches associated with photophobia, phonophobia, nausea, and vomiting. Current specific drugs used in the acute treatment of migraine interact with vascular receptors, a fact that has raised concerns about their cardiovascular safety. In the past, α-adrenoceptor agonists (ergotamine, dihydroergotamine, isometheptene) were used. The last two decades have witnessed the advent of 5-HT1B/1D receptor agonists (sumatriptan and second-generation triptans), which have a well-established efficacy in the acute treatment of migraine. Moreover, current prophylactic treatments of migraine include 5-HT2 receptor antagonists, Ca2+ channel blockers, and β-adrenoceptor antagonists. Despite the progress in migraine research and in view of its complex etiology, this disease still remains underdiagnosed, and available therapies are underused. In this review, we have discussed pharmacological targets in migraine, with special emphasis on compounds acting on 5-HT (5-HT1-7), adrenergic (α1, α2, and β), calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP 1 and CGRP2), adenosine (A1, A2, and A3), glutamate (NMDA, AMPA, kainate, and metabotropic), dopamine, endothelin, and female hormone (estrogen and progesterone) receptors. In addition, we have considered some other targets, including gamma-aminobutyric acid, angiotensin, bradykinin, histamine, and ionotropic receptors, in relation to antimigraine therapy. Finally, the cardiovascular safety of current and prospective antimigraine therapies is touched upon

We Must Fight Them and Whip Them

Having failed three times to establish a beachhead in Texas, N. P. Banks attempted once again in the early spring of 1864, moving toward the rich cotton producing area of central Louisiana and northeast Texas. With a massive three-pronged offensive—which included a large naval component moving up the Red River as well as his own Army of the Gulf, veterans of U. S. Grant’s successful campaign against Vicksburg, and Frederick Steele’s army at Little Rock—he easily captured Alexandria and continued to converge on the strategically vital Confederate city of Shreveport, Louisiana.</p

A Brisk and Brilliant Six Weeks’ Campaign

This chapter deals with Frederick Steele’s campaign in Arkansas in support of Nathaniel Banks’s failed Red River expedition, the murder of black prisoners of war at the battles of Poison Springs and Battle of Marks' Mills, the battle of Jenkins Ferry, and with Richard Taylor’s pursuit of Banks’s defeated army down the Red River.</p

No Nobler Death

Federal forces attempted to reverse early Confederate diplomatic and military successes in the Indian Territory, recruiting their own Native American forces and pushing south out of Kansas. Union troops and their Native American allies were able to reoccupy most of the Indian Territory, but not, as they had hoped, to invade Texas from the north. Intertribal warfare was particularly fierce, and the families of both sides suffered tremendously.</p

Cannot You Do Something to Operate Against Them on Your Side of the River!

With Maj. Gen. U. S. Grant’s campaign against Vicksburg presenting an increasing threat to that vital river fortress, Confederate authorities in Richmond called for Confederate forces in the trans-Mississippi to cooperate with the city’s garrison to raise the siege. A division of Texas troops struck the Federal line on the west bank of the Mississippi River, but, after achieving initial success, were repulsed by Union gunboats.</p

Drive Him Routed from Our Soil

Continues to examine the deteriorating situation for the Confederate forces in Arkansas during the summer of 1863, and, in particular, Sterling Price’s unsuccessful attempt to hold the state’s capital Frederick Steele’s drive up the Arkansas River.</p

Texas Must Take Her Chances

Examines the growing Federal naval blockade of the Texas coast and the sporadic attempts of the Union navy to occupy various point along the Gulf. A dramatic Confederate counteroffensive resulted in the recapture of the major port city of Galveston and the capture or destruction of several Federal blockaders.</p

Theater of a Separate War

Though its most famous battles were waged in the East at Antietam, Gettysburg, and throughout Virginia, the Civil War was clearly a conflict that raged across a continent. From cotton-rich Texas and the fields of Kansas through Indian Territory and into the high desert of New Mexico, the trans-Mississippi theater was site of major clashes from the war’s earliest days through the surrenders of Confederate generals Edmund Kirby Smith and Stand Waite in June 1865. In this comprehensive military history of the war west of the Mississippi River, Thomas W. Cutrer shows that the theater’s distance from events in the East does not diminish its importance to the unfolding of the larger struggle. Theater of a Separate War details the battles between North and South in these far-flung regions, assessing the complex political and military strategies on both sides. While providing the definitive history of the rise and fall of the South’s armies in the far West, Cutrer shows, even if the region’s influence on the Confederacy’s cause waned, its role persisted well beyond the fall of Richmond and Lee’s surrender to Grant. In this masterful study, Cutrer offers a fresh perspective on an often overlooked aspect of Civil War history.</p