What's the evidence for zolmitriptan?

There is good evidence that zolmitriptan can help your migraine symptoms.

We found one big summary of the evidence (known as a systematic review).¹ We also found several other large, well-run studies.^{2 3}

The review included 12 studies on zolmitriptan. The studies were all high-quality studies known as randomised controlled trials.

In some of the studies, some people took zolmitriptan and some people took a dummy treatment for comparison (called a placebo). In other studies, some people took zolmitriptan and other people took another drug for migraine called sumatriptan.

Here is a summary of what the review found about zolmitriptan.¹

• Zolmitriptan relieved migraine headaches within two hours.
• Symptoms became milder or the pain disappeared completely.
• More than 6 in 10 people who took the drug felt better, while about 3 in 10 people taking a placebo improved.
• Doses of 2.5 milligrams and 5 milligrams seemed to work equally well.
• Zolmitriptan worked about as well as sumatriptan.

The other studies we found were all randomised controlled trials. In general they came to similar conclusions as the big review we described above.

One big summary of the research (a systematic review) looked at all the triptan drugs available at the time (in 2007). It 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