Knowledge about oral preventive treatments in patients with migraine: A nationwide study

Background

Patients’ knowledge about their medications is key to guarantee therapeutic compliance in chronic diseases.

Aims of the study

To determine patients’ knowledge of oral preventive treatment (OPT) in migraine.

Methods

This is a cross-sectional study evaluating knowledge of medication with a validated questionnaire that assessed: therapeutic objective, process of use, safety and conservation.

Results

198 patients were included. Mean age was 45.4 ± 11.5 years-old and 92.4% were women. A 61.1% of migraine patients did not know the medication they used, 55.1% showed insufficient knowledge and 6.1% had no knowledge. The most known dimension was conservation (80.3%) and the most unknown dimension of was safety (33.7%). In this regard, 82.3% considered that they should not take precautions when taking the treatment, 80.3% stated that it had no contraindications and 82.8% were unaware of possible interactions with other medications. Worse knowledge about OPT was associated with longer time since migraine onset (p = .049), higher scores on the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (p = .021), less qualified jobs (p = .045), use of monotherapy (p = .001) and longer periods since OPT initiation (p = .013).

Conclusions

The majority of migraine patients did not adequately know their preventive treatment, despite identifying some of the items related to their medication. The present study shows that knowledge of patients about their preventive treatment should be evaluated in clinical practice and could help migraine patients in the correct use of OPT.