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Lavender Essential Oil in the Treatment of Migraine Headache: A Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial
European Neurology, 04/20/2012
Clinical Article
Sasannejad P et al. – The present study suggests that inhalation of lavender essential oil may be an effective and safe treatment modality in acute management of migraine headaches.
Methods- Forty-seven patients with definite diagnosis of migraine headache were divided into cases and controls.
- Cases inhaled lavender essential oil for 15 min, whereas the control group used liquid paraffin for the same time period.
- Patients were asked to record their headache severity and associated symptoms in 30-min intervals for a total of 2 h.
- The authors matched the two groups for key confounding factors.
- The mean reduction of headache severity in cases was 3.6 ± 2.8 based on Visual Analogue Scale score.
- The reduction was 1.6 ± 1.6 in controls.
- This difference between the controls and cases was statistically significant with p < 0.0001.
- From 129 headache attacks in cases, 92 responded entirely or partially to lavender.
- In the control group, 32 out of 68 recorded headache attacks responded to placebo.
- The percentage of responders was significantly higher in the lavender group than the placebo group (p = 0.001).
