Migraine drugs underused, research suggests
Not only does the study suggest these drugs are safe for this subset of migraine patients, it could also have implications for the nearly 10 million migraine sufferers who experience auras -- a disturbance in vision, touch, speech, thinking, or strength that usually precedes a migraine headache . "There are not enough medicines out there to appropriately manage migraine headaches," says senior author Brad Klein, M.D., Medical Director of the Headache Center at Abington Hospital-Jefferson Health. "At a time in history when an unprecedented number of people are getting hooked on narcotic opiates by way of prescribed medications -- as is the case with migraine sufferers as well -- we owe it to ourselves as physicians to try medications that could work without the risk of addiction," says Klein. The study was published in the journal Headache . Migraines are thought to cause pain because they cause a swelling of the blood vessels feeding the brain. However, two ...