The American Headache Society (AHS), working in cooperation with the American Academy of Neurology (AAN), has provided an updated assessment of
the evidence for individual pharmacologic therapies for
acute migraine treatment. The findings were published
in the January issue of Headache. The study report was
written by three headache specialists who are members
of the Guidelines Section of the AHS: Michael J. Marmura, MD, Assistant Professor of Neurology, and Stephen
D. Silberstein, MD, FACP, Director of the Headache Center, both at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia,
and Todd J. Schwedt, MD, MSCI, Associate Professor of
Neurology at Mayo Clinic Arizona in Scottsdale.
It has been 15 years since the AAN and the US
Headache Consortium published a complete set of
evidence-based guidelines for the acute treatment of
migraine. Since that publication, the AAN has updated
its guideline-development process and criteria for evi-
dence, basing recommendations largely on the quality
of evidence in published literature. Although the AAN
and the AHS updated the guidelines for the prevention
of migraine in adults in 2012 using the newer criteria,
a comparable effort to reassess pharmacotherapies for
the acute treatment of migraine in adults was not un-
dertaken until more recently.
Guideline Based on New Evidence and Criteria
In a guest editorial accompanying the study report in
Headache, Drs. Silberstein and Marmura explain that
AAN and AHS Update Guideline
for the Treatment of Acute Migraine
Serving the Neurology Community Since 1993
continued on page 3
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