Breaking the cycle of medication overuse headache

Consider withdrawal plus preventive treatment. Use of sodium valproate, in addition to medication overuse detoxification, led to a significant reduction in headache days and improvement in quality of life at 12 weeks but no difference after 24 weeks, compared with detoxification alone in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study.³¹

A study of 61 patients showed a larger reduction (by 7.2 d/mo) in headache frequency with any preventive medication in addition to medication withdrawal, compared to withdrawal alone (by 4.1 d/mo) after 3 months; however, the relative benefit was gone at 6 months.³²

A study of 98 patients compared immediate and delayed initiation of preventive medication upon withdrawal of overused abortive medication.³³ Response was defined as a > 50% reduction in headache frequency and was similar in both groups; results showed a 28% response with immediate initiation of a preventive; a 23% response with delayed (ie, 2 months after withdrawal) initiation; and a 48% response in both groups at 12 months.

Collectively, these studies suggest that adding a preventive medication at the time of withdrawal has the potential to reduce headache frequency more quickly than withdrawal alone. However, after 3 to 6 months, the outcome of reduced headache frequency is the same whether or not a preventive medication is used—as long as the offending agent has been withdrawn.

Do preventives work without withdrawing overused medication? Patients with MOH often show little or no improvement with addition of a preventive medication only; their response to a preventive improves after withdrawal of the overused medication. Patients without previous headache improvement after addition of a preventive, who also did not improve 2 months after withdrawal, then demonstrated an overall reduction in headache by 26% when a preventive was reintroduced after withdrawal.²

Continue to: The research evidence for preventives