Frovatriptan for the treatment of cluster headaches
CEPHALALGIA 2004; 24:1045-1048
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Report of a small study done at Jefferson headache clinic, Philadelphia, using Frovatriptan  as an added preventive medication in addition to Verapamil. It involved 17 patients and there are no other studies, to date, to give comparative experiences but it's an approach when the regular therapies are not working.

If you are not having inadequate response to your present meds you might give your doc a copy of this message.

The great thing about frova is that it is suppose to keep you pain free and ha free for up to 8 hours.  My dr and I went that route since nothing else was working for me.  Unfortuanatly it was as effective as imitrex for me in the sense that it took 45 min. to kick in and in two hours the ch were back.  I would definitly consider giving this med a try though because it does offer alot of promise.

My Doc had me try that when Frova first hit the market years ago.

720 mg Verapamil plus one Frova in morning and another and night. My results were like Karla's - didn't prevent the hits.

I bumped it (2) in the AM and (2) in the PM and worked much, much better.

From my point of view I would like to add that I have had good to excellent success with Frovatriptan as an added preventative medication. Added in addition to 2 x 120 mg Verapamil SR per day, which works good for me most time of the year.

In Dec. 2008 I tried Frovatriptan and got almost pain free with 3 x 2,5 mg per day, one tablet taken every 8 hours. (My body weight is 106 kg) Frova took appr. 2 days to work good.

A couple of weeks ago my cluster headaches went worse and I started with 3 x 2,5 mg/day Frovatriptan again. Same good result as in Dec. 2008: Pain free after two days, just one "little" CH attack per night, during the first two nights.

After five days I stopped taking Frova, a couple of CH attacks came over the weekend but since then not much.

I prefer to use Frova as an additional preventative, rather than to "wait" for CH attacks and abort them with Sumatriptan s.c. Oxygen works very good for me to abort CH attacks.

With Frova I did not notice ANY side effects. In Dec. 2008 blood pressure and ECG were checked after two weeks of taking Frova: Normal results.

My headache specialist agreed to the 3 x 2,5 mg Frova treatment, but recommended regular BP and ECG monitoring.

I have not tried Naratriptan or Eletriptan.

Gary tried the Frova and it didn't help him (no real surprise as none of the triptans seem to help him)...   but the opinion of his neuro (at the Montefiore Headache Center) is that Frova should be used to "get a break" from the HAs, not as a long term med.  He said it could only be used two weeks at a time - but we never bothered to ask how frequently it could be used because it didn't help here - but now I'm wondering why that would have been the opinion.  Just an FYI for anyone using or considering it.

Laurie