Thirty years of headache research in Italy

Abstract

Over the last few decades, worldwide headache research has made very significant progress. Italy has played a prominent role in this research experience, through several groups of investigators that have regularly been conducting basically independent high-profile studies. A review of the headache literature in the last few decades shows that Italy, which has traditionally been among the countries at the frontline of headache research—nearly 10% of all the articles published in 1984 in Headache and Cephalalgia concerned studies conducted by Italian headache centres—is now second only to the United States. As many as 33 of the 243 articles published in the two journals in 2004 were from Italian research groups, accounting for 13.6% of the total. The next goal is to raise Italian headache research to increasingly higher scientific levels by capitalising on the skills and enthusiasm of young researchers.