Your head is pounding and you have to take your kids to a Halloween party in just a few hours. But you feel a migraine building, and you’re not sure yet how intense it will get. Should you take an aspirin or a triptan?
A new study suggests it doesn’t matter how severe your migraine might become—aspirin should be the first line of defense. This is part of a stepped care approach, in which you try aspirin first before resorting to stronger meds.
According to the lead author on the study, Dr. Christian Lampl of Konventhospital Barmherzige Brueder in Linz, Austria, this stepped care approach is better than the stratified care approach, in which you automatically take whichever medication you think will help the most (which often means you start by reaching for the triptans).
“In migraine, there was barely a trend toward reduced efficacy of aspirin, measured as headache relief at two hours, in severity compared with moderate pre-treatment headache,” Dr. Lampl wrote in the study.
In other words, don’t automatically resort to the most powerful drug in your medicine cabinet the minute you feel a migraine coming on. Learn more about the study on Health24.com.
Do you agree with Dr. Lampl’s conclusions? Tell us why or why not.
