What's the evidence for rizatriptan?

There is good evidence that rizatriptan works for treating migraine attacks. We found one big summary of the evidence (known as a systematic review).¹ We also found two other high-quality studies called randomised controlled trials (RCTs).^{2 3}

The review included 12 studies of rizatriptan involving nearly 6,400 people. These were all high-quality studies. Some people in the studies took rizatriptan and some took a dummy treatment for comparison (called a placebo).

In other studies, people took either rizatriptan or another drug treatment for migraine.

Here are more details about what we found:

• Rizatriptan works better than a dummy drug (a placebo) within 2 hours of taking it. It makes people's pain better or gets rid of it altogether.¹
• 7 in 10 people who took rizatriptan found their migraine pain got better, compared to 3 in 10 who took a placebo.²
• Rizatriptan worked better than a drug called naratriptan and about the same as a drug called zolmitriptan.^{1 2}
• Rizatriptan worked better than a drug called ergotimine, combined with caffeine.³

One big summary of the research (a systematic review) looked at all the triptan drugs available at the time (in 2007). They looked at 221 studies in total and selected 38 good-quality studies. The researchers said all triptans worked better than a dummy drug (a placebo) to reduce pain or get rid of migraine within two hours. But only sumatriptan and rizatriptan worked better than a placebo drug within half an hour.⁴

For more details:

Read this information about the treatment in Clinical Evidence