The comparison of venlafaxine and topiramate treatment in patients with chronic migraine

Chronic migrane treatment is not worked so much, also it is a problematic issue and a small number of randomized trails on this subject is available. The aim of this study is to compare effectiveness of drugs which include venlafaxine and topiramate in patients diagnosed with chronic migraine.Patients enrolled in this study had headache which was diagnosed according to 2004 IHS (International Headache Association) as chronic migraine at Firat University Hospital, Department of Neurology outpatient clinic between December 2009 and June 2010. Patients were randomized as single blind into two groups, 30 patients in each group.Before the treatment, MIDAS (The Migrane Disability Assessment Scale), VAS (Visual Analogue Pain Scale) and the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression were performed to all patients in the study. The severity of patients? pain by VAS and patients? work loss and the frequency of days of pain by MIDAS were determined, so that work loss due to migrane and post-treatment pain-intensity, frequency were evaluated. Patients with severely depressed were aimed to be excluded from study through application of the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression as well as before and after treatment these patients were evaluated to correlate with MIDAS, the response of patients to antideprassant effects of venlafaxine were studied to determine whether or not independent.Before and 3 months after venlafaxine treatment (group I), the comparison of evaluation of measurements of total attack duration, attack frequency and severity of attacks showed that statistically significant improvment was determined in all parameters (p ? 0.05).However, before and 3 months after toprimate treatment (group II), the comparison of evaluation of measurements of total attack duration, attack frequency and severity of attacks showed that statistically significant improvement was determined in all parameters (p?0.05). 3 months after the treatment of venlafaxine (group I) and topiramate (group II), there was no difference found between these groups when attack frequency, total attack duration and severity of attack were compared (p>0.05).Before and after treatment of venlafaxine (group I) and topiramate (group II), while MIDAS, HAMILTON and VAS values were compared between groups and there was no statistically significant difference found at the end of this comparison (p>0.05), within each group, after treatment pre- and 3-month-post-treatments values of MIDAS, HAMILTON and VAS were significantly decreased, and this difference was found statistically significant (p = 0.001).Keywords: Chronic migraine, treatment, venlafaxine, topiramate.