Research Highlights Benefits of Non-Pharmacologic Interventions in Migraine Care
Four years ago, researchers at Cincinnati Children’s published a study that cast doubt on the effectiveness of medication to treat migraine in young people. Today they are continuing to discover new preventive and therapeutic strategies for this debilitating condition.
Results from the 2017 Childhood and Adolescent Migraine Prevention (CHAMP) study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, came as a surprise to many in the field. The key finding: amitriptyline and topiramate, the two most commonly prescribed medications for preventing migraine in teens were as effective as placebo in preventing migraine – they all appeared to work equally. The study tracked more than 300 patients at 31 centers across 24 weeks.
In July 2021, experts at Cincinnati Children’s and the University of Iowa published a three-year follow-up study to CHAMP. The new study reports that CHAMP participants maintained the improvements they gained from treatments received even after they stopped taking the medications or the placebo.



