That's why scientists had to make their patients suffer -- researchers keep trying to trigger migraines using different mechanisms. The more successful they are, the more likely it is that the mechanism being tested is actually a common cause of migraines. And once we know what the common causes are, we can try to develop better treatments that target them.

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In this case the 86 percent "success" rate, which the researchers say is much higher than results with other triggers, was owed to increases of a naturally occurring substance called cyclic AMP, or cAMP.

Our bodies use cAMP to dilate blood vessels, so an increase of it can increase the flow of blood. To see if cAMP might cause migraines, the researchers dosed their subjects with cilostazol, a drug that increases cAMP concentrations in the body.

Of the 14 study participants (all of whom were migraine patients) 12 developed a headache after taking cilostazol that gradually turned into a standard migraine attack. Most of them were able to treat the symptoms successfully with their usual migraine medication, which the researchers hope means they were having genuine migraines. When given a placebo, only two of the 14 participants had migraines.

This is obviously a very small study, so these researchers and others will have to reproduce their results on a much larger scale before we can know that cAMP is a migraine culprit.