Management of medication overuse headache: 1-year randomized multicentre open-label trial

It is a general belief that patients with medication overuse headache (MOH) need withdrawal of acute headache medication before they respond to prophylactic medication. In this 1-year open-labelled, multicentre study intention-to-treat analyses were performed on 56 patients with MOH. These were randomly assigned to receive prophylactic treatment from the start without detoxification, undergo a standard out-patient detoxification programme without prophylactic treatment from the start, or no specific treatment (5-month follow-up). The primary outcome measure, change in headache days per month, did not differ significantly between groups. However, the prophylaxis group had the greatest decrease in headache days compared with baseline, and also a significantly more pronounced reduction in total headache index (headache days/month x headache intensity x headache hours) at months 3 (P = 0.003) and 12 (P = 0.017) compared with the withdrawal group. At month 12, 53% of patients in the prophylaxis group had >= 50% reduction in monthly headache days compared with 25% in the withdrawal group (P = 0.081). Early introduction of preventive treatment without a previous detoxification programme reduced total headache suffering more effectively compared with abrupt withdrawal. (ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00159588).