Improved patient satisfaction and pain evolution with almotriptan in migraine: a primary care study.

Abstract

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE:

The START study was a large general practice observational study involving 400 patients with migraine. Given the large sample size, a sub-analysis was planned to ascertain whether any patient characteristics/behaviors might help predict/explain the responses observed in this study, which demonstrated that almotriptan administered early when pain was mild significantly improved pain-related outcomes compared with non-early/non-mild treatment.

METHODS:

This pre-planned sub-analysis assessed the impact of predictors of patient satisfaction, medication history, delayed drug intake, etc. on the primary pain endpoints of the START study.

RESULTS:

Patients had previously tried an average of 2.5 drugs for migraine relief and were currently taking a mean of 1.4 drugs. Almotriptan had been tried by 21% of the sample and was still being used by 83% of this sub-group. Treatment satisfaction was higher in the subset of patients taking almotriptan than in almotriptan-naїve individuals (p < 0.001) and this may explain why this group had the highest continuation rate of all drugs evaluated. On completion of the study, patient satisfaction was higher in the early/mild treatment group than the non-early/non-mild group (p = 0.049). Many patients delayed taking almotriptan, despite being instructed otherwise. Patients reported that this was primarily because they believed that they should only take the medication in the case of a severe migraine attack and/or to ensure that the symptoms were definitely due to migraine headache. The limitations of the trial include its open, observational design, and the small number of individuals who managed to treat their migraine attack within 1 hour when it was still mild.

CONCLUSIONS:

Almotriptan was associated with increased patient satisfaction, particularly when taken early. Further action is required to increase patient compliance with early treatment regimens to improve clinical outcomes.

• Authors: Samuel Díaz-Insa, Carlos Vila, Caroline C McGown
• Journal: Current medical research and opinion (Curr Med Res Opin) Vol. 27 Issue 3 Pg. 559-67 (Mar 2011) ISSN: 1473-4877 [Electronic] England
• PMID: 21222569 (Publication Type: Evaluation Study, Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't, Review)

Chemical References

• Analgesics
• Tryptamines
• almotriptan

Topics

• Analgesics (therapeutic use)
• Chemoprevention (methods, statistics & numerical data)
• Disease Progression
• Humans
• Migraine Disorders (diagnosis, drug therapy, epidemiology)
• Pain (diagnosis, drug therapy, epidemiology, prevention & control)
• Patient Satisfaction (statistics & numerical data)
• Primary Health Care
• Prognosis
• Tryptamines (therapeutic use)