What's the evidence for aspirin?

There is good evidence that aspirin will make your migraine headache better. If your headache is severe, it will reduce the pain but may not get rid of it entirely.

The research on aspirin is good because it comes from many reliable studies called randomised controlled trials (or RCTs for short). Altogether, we found 12 of these studies. They looked at different ways of taking aspirin: as a pill, as a drip (IV infusion), as a pill you dissolve in water and as a pill that dissolves in your mouth.

Some studies compared aspirin with a dummy treatment (a placebo). Other studies compared aspirin with other drugs for migraine, including paracetamol plus codeine and prescription drugs such as sumatriptan.

Here is a summary of what the studies found.

• In general, aspirin on its own, or combined with a drug that stops you feeling sick (metoclopramide), worked better than a placebo in giving people relief from migraine attacks. Aspirin reduced people's headaches from severe or moderate, or to mild or none.
• One study found it worked about the same as two other painkillers taken together, paracetamol plus codeine.
• Other studies found it worked as well as the prescription drugs sumatriptan and zolmitriptan.
• And one study found it worked better than a drug called ergotamine.

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For more details:

Read this information about the treatment in Clinical Evidence