Medical oophorectomy with and without estrogen add-back therapy in the prevention of migraine headache

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Goserelin in the context of migraine.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults, women only.

Twenty-one women with regular menstrual cycles and a diagnosis of migraine headache were enrolled.

After a 2.5-month placebo run-in phase, all patients received a subcutaneous goserelin implant (a gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist) to induce a medical oophorectomy.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized and placebo-controlled study.

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

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Goserelin group a baseline to be compared against.

A time span of 2 months appears in the methods.

One month later, while continuing goserelin, participants were randomized to receive a transdermal patch containing 100 microg of estradiol-17beta (gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist/estradiol group, n = 9) or a placebo patch (gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist/placebo group, n = 12) during a 2-month treatment phase.

The primary outcome measure was the headache index, which was defined as the mean of pain severity ratings (0 to 10 scale) recorded three times per day by daily diary.

Secondary outcome measures included headache disability, headache severity, headache frequency, and the percentage of headaches with a pain severity rating of 7 or greater.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Administration, Cutaneous, Estradiol, Goserelin, Menstruation and Migraine Disorders.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of Goserelin in people with migraine over 2 months.

Its findings take up roughly 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

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

More context: the Goserelin compound page, Migraine research.