VIDEO: 1 in 5 individuals treat migraine with opioids
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AUSTIN, Texas — One in five individuals with migraine used opioids or kept them on hand for treatment, with 83% reporting at least 1 day of opioid use in the past 30 days, according to Richard B. Lipton, MD, in this Healio video.
“Most treatment guidelines recommend against the use of opioids for migraine, because opioid use can lead to worsening of headache over time, increased frequency of headache and also is associated with greater disability in people who have migraine,” Lipton, professor of neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said.
Lipton and colleagues examined patterns of opioid use for headache using a web-based survey in 2021 that included 14,492 respondents in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
According to results presented at the American Headache Society annual meeting, men were more likely than women to use opioids or have them available to treat headache, with the highest use in France (33%) and the lowest in Japan (5.3%).
Further, acetaminophen with codeine was the most widely used opioid across the six countries, with the exception of Japan, where tramadol was most widely used.