Methotrexate and Migraine

donnas

Hi, not been around for a while, hope all are ticking along as best as you can!

Some of you might remember that I was admitted to hospital with a severe migraine some months ago. Since then I've been really struggling with the headaches and vomiting and all the things that migraines bring. However, I saw a different rheumatologist and a migraine specialist lately, and they think I'm having an idiosyncratic reaction to methotrexate. The migraine specialist hadn't heard of MTX causing this reaction before, but agreed that the course of my migraines coinciding with going on and coming off MTX certainly suggested that. He wrote a letter to my rheumatologist stating that. The rheumatologist I saw realised how big an impact the migraines were having on me and arranged for me to have a steroid injection while they decide what to do with me.



I am now off the MTX and instead of ten migraines a month I've had one, and the steroid is holding off the flares for now, with a low dose of sulfasalazine to try and keep my joints on an even keel.

Anyone else ever experienced an increase in migraine severity and frequency with methotrexate? I'd be interested to hear from you if so.

frogmorton

Donna

l just want to say you poor thing! I have migraines (kuckily only on hydroxy atm) and my eldest daughter had hemiplegic ones too so l get how bad it must have been for you. :sad:

Do let us know how you get on and hope they can come up with a longer term solution for you

Love

Toni xx

stickywicket

I've heard of the 'meth headache', donnas, but the 'meth migraine' sounds like a step too far. I'm glad they seem to have diagnosed cause & effect and I hope they soon find something that is effective for you without giving you any intolerable side-effects.

mp1952

Thats interesting Donna..

Glad that you are feeling better.

Marion

donnas

Thanks all. The migraines are back, but nowhere as bad as when I was on MTX. And I have a treatment that seems to work most times now. I really don't want to go back on MTX. A couple of months to wait...

stickywicket

Some known migraine triggers are cheese, chocolate & alcohol. Maybe you'd have had them anyway but the meth made them worse. I hope you can go on something else asap, Donna.

donnas

When I had the migraine that landed me in hospital the doctors initially thought I'd had a type of stroke (vertebral artery dissection), I was so unwell. I've always had headaches, but these were worse and much more incapacitating than before.

I've learnt a lot about migraines since this all happened and a lot of the so called migraine triggers are apparently a myth. There's a part of the brain that responds to change in routine or sensory information which overreacts and causes the migraine. The so called food "triggers" are apparently part of the migraine. You get a craving for certain foods before you get the headache and therefore associate the two. Common triggers are changes in routine, eating patterns, temperatures and hormonal changes.

The day of the migraine from hell was a day that I increased my MTX, which is why I phoned my doctor, (pounding head, constant vomiting, severe photophobia, phonophobia, osmophobia, severe neck pain - I felt like I'd been kicked repeatedly round the back of the head), who told me to go to A&E straight away. The rheumatologist immediately dismissed the MTX as a trigger. Thankfully now after lots of stopping and starting, first the rheumatology nurse then a different rheumatologist and the headache specialist all agree that MTX might not be for me. If I can get my headaches under better control they're going to put me back on it though! But not for a few months.

I'm obviously VERY ambivalent about it all. I know I'll have to go on something for my RA soon before I have another flare but my migraines were ten, twenty, fifty times more disabling.