Prophylactic treatment of migraine with an angiotensin II receptor blocker: a randomized controlled trial

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Angiotensin II in the context of migraine in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults and middle-aged adults.

Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study performed in a Norwegian neurological outpatient clinic from January 2001 to February 2002.

Sixty patients aged 18 to 65 years with 2 to 6 migraine attacks per month were recruited mainly from newspaper advertisements.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and crossover study.

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Angiotensin II group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Angiotensin II, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Angiotensin II could be set against what happens without it.

In the crossover set-up each of the participants took both Angiotensin II and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

A time span of 4 weeks appears in the methods.

A placebo run-in period of 4 weeks was followed by two 12-week treatment periods separated by 4 weeks of placebo washout.

Thirty patients were randomly assigned to receive one 16-mg candesartan cilexetil tablet daily in the first treatment period followed by 1 placebo tablet daily in the second period.

The remaining 30 received placebo followed by candesartan.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Angiotensin II, Angiotensin Receptor Antagonists, Benzimidazoles, Biphenyl Compounds, Migraine Disorders and Tetrazoles.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Angiotensin II in people with migraine over 4 weeks.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 6 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2003 (JAMA), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Angiotensin II compound page, Migraine research.