Migraine—an exciting time to be a headache specialist 

The final satellite symposium of the conference explored the complex psychosocial and socioeconomic risk factors associated with the development of medication overuse headache and the key considerations for optimal MOH management and treatment. 

This was followed by the “Highlights of the Congress.” Professor Peter Goadsby, London, UK selected and presented the headache highlights and commented that now is an exciting time to be a headache specialist because there are so many new effective and safe therapies. This was reflected in his selection of abstracts, most of which provided further confirmation of the efficacy and safety of a variety of new acute and preventive therapies. 

His selection also included functional magnetic resonance studies increasing the knowledge base about migraine pathophysiology; and new knowledge on vestibular migraine and trigeminal neuralgia.  

Alzheimer’s disease—new knowledge on early biomarkers 

The highlights of the congress for neurodegenerative diseases were selected and presented by Professor Elisabeth Stögmann, Vienna, Austria.  

She commented that as any therapeutic or disease-modifying interventions would need to be applied very early in Alzheimer’s disease before the onset of symptoms, she had selected abstracts that might help in defining this preclinical phase of AD. 

The selected abstracts therefore provided new knowledge on early biomarkers. They included an abstract describing subtle changes in cognition (changes in spatial orientation and navigation) and others reporting promising results for a variety of different cerebrospinal fluid and plasma biomarkers.