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Joel R. Saper, MD
From the Michigan Head Pain and Neurological Institute, Ann Arbor.

Corresponding author: Joel R. Saper, MD, Michigan Head Pain and Neurological Institute, 3120 Professional Dr, Ann Arbor, MI 48104-5131 (e-mail: jrsaper@aol.com).

Arch Neurol. 2001;58:1481-1482.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

DON'T CONFUSE me with the facts, scientific or otherwise. Not all that matters always matters. This is particularly true with headache, where what seems to matter most are variables that we do not understand, are not easily identified, and have not been studied. Headache is a condition in which over 30% of the afflicted respond to placebo; patients with nearly identical symptoms respond to entirely different treatments; and pill color and patient confidence may be more important than such factors as the area under the curve, recurrence rates, time-to-peak value, and others.^{1, 2} It is an illness in which a magical treatment for one patient serves to worsen the identical condition in another.

Looking at the studies to date, one thing is compelling: all the triptans work.^{3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12} The differences between one and another, with few exceptions, may not mean much clinically. More than 50% of the patients . . . [Full Text of this Article]