What's the evidence for naratriptan?

There is good evidence that naratriptan can help if you have a migraine attack. We found one large summary of the research called a systematic review.¹ We also found a further three high-quality studies (known as randomised controlled trials or RCTs).^{2 3 4}

The review included eight studies of naratriptan which included a total of 1,736 people with migraine. Some of the studies we looked at compared naratriptan to a dummy treatment given as a comparison (a placebo). Other studies compared naratriptan to other triptan drugs including one called sumatriptan.

Here's a summary of what we found:

• Naratriptan works better than a placebo drug within two hours of taking it. It reduced pain or got rid of it altogether.¹
• Almost 2 in 3 people get better within four hours of treatment.²
• Naratriptan didn't work as well as sumatriptan or rizatriptan.¹

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 migraines within two hours. But only sumatriptan and rizatriptan worked better than a placebo drug within half an hour.⁵

For more details:

Read this information about the treatment in Clinical Evidence