Non-steroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs Alone or With a Triptan and Reports of Transition From Episodic to Chronic Migraine

Chronic Migraine (CM), or 15 or more migraine headaches per month, is common in tertiary headache care and is associated with a number of deleterious outcomes, especially higher disability and poorer quality of life, relative to those with Episodic Migraine (EM) defined as 14 or fewer migraine headaches per month. Limited work has begun to examine factors that increase or decrease the risk of developing CM. One factor that appears especially relevant is symptomatic medication use. The current study builds upon and expands previous work considering the influence non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) and/or triptan use has on the likelihood of developing CM.

This study is a retrospective observational cohort study of data collected via mail survey and collated in the American Migraine Prevalence and Prevention (AMPP) database.

Survey results from the AMPP study will be analyzed retrospectively. The AMPP is a longitudinal, population-based, mailed-questionnaire survey. In 2004, 120,000 United States (US) households were screened and 24,000 individuals who reported severe headaches were identified and additional questionnaires have been administered annually. This analysis uses data from respondents who meet second edition of the International Headache Classification-2 (IHCD-2) criteria for EM in 2005 with follow up results in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009. EM is defined as 1 to 14 headaches per month and CM is defined as 15 or more headaches per month.