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Sumatriptan and Naproxen Sodium for the
Acute Treatment of Migraine
Smith TR, Sunshine A, Stark, SR, et al.
Posted: October 2005  
Headache 2005;45:983-991

Objective:  To evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of treatment with a combination of sumatriptan
50 mg.(encapsulated) and naproxen sodium 500 mg. administered concurrently in the acute treatment of migraine.

Background:  The pathogenesis of migraine involves multiple peripheral and central neural mechanisms that individually have been successful targets for acute (abortive) and preventive treatment. This suggests that multi-mechanism therapy, which acts on multiple target sites, may confer improved efficacy and symptom relief for patients with migraine.

Conclusions:  This is among the first prospective studies to demonstrate that multi-mechanism acute therapy for migraine, combining a triptan and an analgesic, is well tolerated and offers improved clinical benefits over monotherapy with these selected standard antimigraine treatments. Specifically, sumatriptan 50 mg. (encapsulated) and naproxen sodium 500 mg. resulted in significantly superior pain relief as compared to monotherapy with either sumatriptan 50 mg. or naproxen sodium 500 mg. for the acute treatment of migraine. Because encapsulation of the sumatriptan for blinding purposes may have altered its pharmacokinetic profile and thereby decreased the efficacy responses, additional studies are warranted that do not involve encapsulaton of the active treatments and assess the true onset of action of multi-mechanism therapy in migraine. This study did show that the combination of sumatriptan and naproxen sodium was well tolerated and that there was no significant increase in the incidence of adverse events compared to monotherapy.