Eletriptan: pharmacological differences and clinical results

The potential advantages of eletriptan lie firstly in its lipophilicity reflected as an increased rate of absorption and Tmax compared to sumatriptan. This is manifested in a modest advantage over sumatriptan in terms of speed of onset, 2 h headache response and 2 h pain free. However, eletriptan has not yet been shown to have an advantage over the other triptans for lack of head-to head comparisons. It does not appear to have an advantage over sumatriptan for headache recurrence. The second advantage is the partial agonist activity at the 5-HT(1B) receptor, reducing the potential for cardiovascular side-effects compared to the other triptans. Although no serious cardiovascular events have yet been recognized, eletriptan should still be used with extreme caution for patients with cardiovascular risk factors.