2026 American Academy of Neurology Abstract Website

Objective:

Our objective is to identify the most frequently used migraine relief methods across various countries where Migraine Buddy is utilized, and to assess their comparative effectiveness.

Background:

Migraine Buddy, with 4 million users, helps track migraine attacks and generate reports. Users log attack parameters, including duration, pain, location, medications, and rate relief method effectiveness as "helpful," "somewhat helpful," or "not helpful."

Design/Methods:

We retrospectively examined the dataset, preserving original entries while manually classifying relief methods to avoid bias. We then analyzed the distribution of distinct relief methods across the top 60 countries, ranking them by the number of unique methods reported. Finally, we assessed the effectiveness of these methods using user level (adoption) and migraine level (health outcomes) analyses. The results are presented as helpful/unhelpful ratio.

Results:

Default "relief methods" proposed in the app are: Dark room rest, Sleep, Yoga/meditate, Stay indoor, Ice pack, Food, Caffeine, Hot shower, Cold shower, Drink water, Heat pad. At least one non-pharmacological relief method was reported by 75% of users. Globally, the most reported relief methods are sleep, dark room rest, and drink water (at both user and attack levels). However, these are not the most helpful. In terms of ratio (helpful+somewhat helpful)/unhelpful, the 6 most efficient methods reported by users are: sunglasses (5,29), Air conditioning (5.01), dim light (4.93), cold compress (4.74) quiet environment (4.71), and cool fan (4.63). A more complete list of 50 methods will be presented in the poster.

Conclusions:

The relief methods proposed by default in the app are the most selected by the users but not necessarily the most effective. The most effective methods reported by users are related to photophobia, phonophobia and temperature. Cultural differences will be presented in the poster.