Our aim was to measure and compare the link between
pain patients and the different kinds of
analgesic medications they use by the Leeds Dependence Questionnaire (LDQ). This is a self-completion 10-item instrument to measure the severity of dependence upon a variety of substances. LDQ was administered to 200 episodic
migraine patients (EM group), 77 chronic
migraine patients (CM group) overusing acute medications, and 114 patients suffering from
rheumatic disease (RD group), consecutively attending the
Headache Centre or the Rheumatology Clinic of the University Hospital of Modena in the course of the first semester of 2007. The link with
analgesics was greater in
migraine patients than in patients with
rheumatic disease, since the LDQ total score was significantly higher in the EM (6.65 +/- 0.32, P < 0.005) and CM groups (9.61 +/- 0.59, P < 0.0001) than in the RD group (5.17 +/- 0.37) (Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U-tests).
Migraine patients were significantly more linked to
triptans and to combined medications than to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. The strength of the link between
migraine patients and the
analgesic medications they take could represent
a factor of vulnerability: overusing these medications could develop
medication overuse headache.