LAKE BUENA VISTA, FLA. – The etiology of intractable daily headaches is broad and includes life-threatening diagnoses. But a large proportion of those headaches results from overuse of therapies for migraine, making them in some cases an iatrogenic and avoidable complication, according to a headache specialist.
After ruling out serious systemic diseases, one of the first questions to ask patients with chronic daily headache is whether they have a history of migraine and, if this history is positive, how often they have been taking medications to abort symptoms, reported Wendy L. Wright, MS, a headache specialist and family nurse practitioner in private practice in Amherst, N.H.
Wendy Wright
“Use of any medicine for the treatment of migraine more than 2 or 3 times per week can result in medication overuse headache,” according to Ms. Wright, who maintained that medication overuse headache is “almost always transformed migraine.”
Medication overuse headaches do not stem from prescription drugs only, Ms. Wright said at the meeting, which was held by the American Pain Society and Global Academy for Medical Education. Global Academy and this organization are owned by the same company. She cited data indicating that acetaminophen is implicated in almost half of overuse headaches, but most patients are taking this drug or others in combinations. One study found that at the time that overuse headache developed, the average number of daily doses of headache drugs, including different types of drugs, was 5.2, Ms. Wright said.
Controlling medication overuse headaches is challenging and often requires several steps, she said. Overuse of butalbital, for example, requires tapering.
“You do not want to cold turkey individuals who have been taking high doses of butalbiltal because they can actually have a seizure,” Ms. Wright cautioned.
A more prudent strategy outlined by Ms. Wright involves a slow taper of the medication that the patient has been overusing while simultaneously uptitrating prophylactic therapies, such as beta blockers, divalproex, or topiramate. For butalbital, specifically, Ms. Wright recommended reducing the dose by about 10% per week with complete withdrawal in 2 to 3 months. For treatment of migraine, abortive medications should be used that have a different mechanism of action from the one implicated in the overuse complication.
“Here is one of my strategies: 0.5 mg to 1.0 mg per day of prednisone along with a [proton pump inhibitor],” Ms. Wright reported. “I taper the prednisone over 21 days, but at the same time I am pulling away their abortive medications.”
As migraine transforms from medication overuse into chronic daily headache, the presentation often shifts from its rapid attack-like onset into a less severe presentation, often losing the aura for those who had aura previously, Ms. Wright said. For migraine patients who develop chronic daily headache, other etiologies, such as meningitis or a tumor, must be considered. However, suspicion of an overuse syndrome should intensify for patients who report taking drugs like triptans 10 or more days per month or analgesics such as acetaminophen or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications 15 days or more per days per month.
In some cases, patients take it upon themselves to increase the frequency of drugs they use to control migraine. This is particularly common for nonprescription agents, such as acetaminophen, that patients consider to be benign. However, many patients come to her specialty clinic from another provider who increased the frequency of abortive medications without understanding or considering the overuse phenomenon. Patients should be educated about the risks of medication overuse, but clinicians can avoid overuse by increasing their focus on prophylaxis.
Prophylaxis is particularly useful in patients with known triggers or a consistent pattern of migraine, such as migraine related to the menstrual cycle, Ms. Wright said. She referred to joint guidelines from the American Headache Society and the American Academy of Neurology (AHS/AAN) that have outlined available prophylactic therapies grouped by level of supporting evidence (Headache. 2012 Jun;52[6]:930-45).
Medication overuse headache is such a well-recognized phenomenon that it has been given its own ICD-10 code for reimbursement, but Ms. Wright said. In addition to prophylactic therapies recommended by AHS/AAN, she recommended pursuing adjunctive nonpharmacologic strategies for migraine prevention. Acupuncture is one such option. In addition, patients must be educated about the risks.
Ms. Wright has financial relationships with Merck, Pfizer, and Takeda.