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| |  IHRS: Migraine Patients Prefer Faster Onset Of Pain Relief From Maxalt (Rizatriptan) To Sumatriptan Copenhagen, Denmark -- December 5, 2000 -- Nearly twice as many people with migraine preferred Maxalt (rizatriptan) wafer to sumatriptan tablet - mainly because of its faster onset of action - revealed a major ‘real life’ study presented at the 10th International Headache Research Seminar in Copenhagen, Denmark. The 12-country open label study included 548 migraine sufferers from Europe, South America and South Africa. All had a six month history of migraine and had never taken rizatriptan or sumatriptan before. Patients were randomly assigned to treatment with Maxalt (10mg wafer) for the first attack followed by sumatriptan (50mg tablet) for the next attack, or the same treatments but in the reverse order. A total of 481 patients completed the crossover study - 83 percent being female, and 17 percent male. Their mean age was 33.7 years. The primary endpoint of the study was patient preference. Nearly two-thirds (64.3 per cent) of the 381 patients who expressed a preference opted for Maxalt, while only one-third (35.7 per cent) preferred sumatriptan (p<0.001). The most important reason patients gave for preferring Maxalt was that “the wafer relieved my headache pain faster than the tablet”. This was confirmed by the superior efficacy of Maxalt over sumatriptan: -Headache relief at two hours was 76 percent for Maxalt and 67 percent for sumatriptan (p<0.001). Maxalt gave superior pain relief over sumatriptan as early as 30 minutes after dosing. According to Prof. Julio Pascual, a study investigator at Hospital Marqués de Valdecilla, Santender, Spain, the survey confirms that Maxalt wafer is preferred over sumatriptan tablet. "Preference is an endpoint which is meaningful to both patients and physicians and is able to translate study data into clinical use. These results also show that patients gain more rapid and more effective pain relief with Maxalt than with sumatriptan. This is very important in the effective management of migraine, ensuring that patients can get on with their lives as quickly as possible after a migraine attack," said Prof. Pascual. Maxalt was also more effective in the treatment of menstrually associated migraine, with four in every five (80 percent) of study subjects reporting pain relief at two hours with Maxalt, compared with 65 percent when treated with sumatriptan. The rate of drug-related adverse events were similar with both types of treatment - 34.1 percent with sumatriptan compared to 31.5 percent when treated with Maxalt. The most common side effects were: dizziness (affecting approximately 6 percent of patients), nausea (approximately 7 percent), somnolence (7 percent) and vomiting (up to 3 percent). Previous research has shown that the main reason for patient dissatisfaction with migraine therapy is that pain relief takes too long. The second commonest problem is that the therapy does not relieve all of their pain. Maxalt was developed specifically to overcome these problems, with rapid absorption and high bioavailability. This can translate into fast pain relief and consistent efficacy for patients. Studies have previously shown that Maxalt (10mg) tablet achieves faster onset of action and greater pain freedom at two hours than the triptans sumatriptan, zolmitriptan and naratriptan. In addition, more patients had no migraine symptoms and no functional disability at 2 hours following treatment with Maxalt than with the other agents. People treated with Maxalt can rely on its ongoing efficacy. Maxalt gives consistent migraine relief, with 86 percent achieving headache relief in at least two out of every three migraine attacks. Dr Christopher Allen, Merck, Sharp and Dohme, commented: “The results from this new study confirm that patients prefer Maxalt wafers to sumatriptan tablets, primarily because they feel that Maxalt provides more rapid relief of headache than sumatriptan. This international study confirms the results of an earlier preference study in a US population presented at the American Headache Society earlier this year, in which Maxalt wafer was also preferred to sumatriptan tablet for precisely the same reason.” Migraine is estimated to affect 18 percent of women and six percent of men, and it pre-dominantly affects people in their working years - 25-55 years of age. Economic estimates show that the cost of migraine ranges from US$6 billion to $17 billion per year in the US alone. Merck, Sharp & Dohme (MSD) is a leading research-based pharmaceutical products and services company that develops and markets a broad range of innovative products to improve human health and the quality of life.
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