The effect of prophylactic drugs in pediatric and adolescent migraine compared to placebo.

Abstract

Migraine is a common neurologic disorder in the pediatric and adolescent population, with a general prevalence of 11 %, causing a functional detriment in quality of life and leading to the developement of long episodes of chronic migraine, because of this, pharmacologic prophylaxis in migraine in the pediatric population is a fundamental part of stablishing a long term treatment plan. The purpose of this review is to determine the effect of prophylactic management in the recurrence of migraine episodes in pediatric and adolescent patients in comparison to placebo. For this purpose, a review of the following databases was done: ScienceDirect, Pubmed and SciELO, articles with full text availability were included, with MeSH terms of migraine, prophylaxis and pediatric population, within the categories of review articles, original articles and meta-analysis both in English and in Spanish, published between 2019 and 2025. This review concludes that prophylaxis for migraine in the pediatric population is still in an early stage of investigation, with limitations in the evaluated studies that hinder reaching statistical significance in all described treatment options, a greater amount of evidence is needed to formulate a consensus on the management of this condition.