The influence of multimodal behavioral treatment on the consumption of acute migraine drugs: a randomized, controlled study
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Published on: June 2, 2014
1Faculty of Health and Occupational Studies, Department of Health and Caring Sciences, University of Gävle, Sweden. khg@hig.se
Objectives:
To characterize overall drug use in migraine in conjunction with multimodal behavioral treatment (MBT).
Methods:
Seventy-six adults reporting at least two monthly migraine attacks underwent a randomized, controlled, 24-week MBT intervention. Migraine drugs and symptoms were registered in an Internet-based diary.
Results:
During 4256 days of baseline registration, 859 drug doses were taken during 655 of the 856 days with migraine headache. Triptans and analgesics constituted 56.7 and 38.3% of all doses with efficacy ratios of 0.41 and 0.20, respectively. Men displayed significantly lower drug efficacy (p = 0.001), and used triptans significantly less (p < 0.001) and analgesics significantly more (p < 0.001) than women. At the end of the MBT, total drug consumption decreased by 22% (p = 0.029), corresponding to 27% fewer days with migraine headache. Drug efficacy increased during MBT from 0.30 to 0.52 (p < 0.001), mainly explained by an increased proportion of mild attacks, which also was the attack category that displayed the largest increase in drug efficacy.
Conclusions:
Triptans were the most used and efficient drugs. MBT led to decreased and more efficient drug consumption. Men used triptans less frequently.
