A combination of anti-migraine drug sumatriptan and NSAID naproxen appears to aid headache pain for 24 hours without adverse events better than placebo.

Findings were presented at the 60th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology, DGDispatch reports.

Researchers had the endpoint of a percentage of patients who remained free of pain with no adverse events from two to 24 hours without the use of rescue therapy,

Patients were required to report adverse events up to five days after taking their medications.

Study participants were 87 per cent women and 90 per cent Caucasian with a mean age of 40 years.

Out of 726 patients on the combination therapy, 16 per cent achieved the endpoint, compared with 11 per cent of the 723 patients on sumatriptan monotherapy, nine per cent of the 720 patients on naproxen monotherapy, and seven per cent of the 742 patients on placebo.

"We found that [the combination] could differentiate between sumatriptan alone, naproxen alone, or placebo when looking at the novel endpoint of pain relief and freedom from adverse events," study author, Stephen Landy, said.

He added that a combination product under the trade name Treximet was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration on April 15th 2008.

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