Aspirin, long in use as a remedy after the onset of headaches, may also prevent migraines in some patients if taken daily, a study released Saturday indicated.
The research showed a group of men who took one tablet daily suffered 20 percent fewer migraine headaches than those who did not, and those who took aspirin and still reported migraines said the attacks were shorter and less intense, said Julie Buring, an epidemiologist at Harvard University."You've got 2.7 million people in the United States who suffer migraine every year, so if you reduce that by even 20 percent, you're really talking about a tremendous number of people," she said.
Migraine is a vascular disease that occurs when blood vessels in the brain constrict, then dilate and pain begins. Typically, it is treated with drugs to either relieve pain or constrict blood vessels.
"It is commonly accepted that it is better to try to prevent the migraine than to treat it once it occurs," said Buring, who presented her research at an American Heart Association conference on stroke and cerebral vascular disease.
"The other prophylactic drugs that are usually recommended for migraine are very powerful drugs . . . so, until now, there really hasn't been a safe drug that has been effective," she said.
Buring said it was not clear why aspirin helped prevent migraine, but researchers believe it keeps blood platelets from releasing the chemical serotonin, a substance released before the onset of migraines.