I have just started to take atacand for migraines.Just wondering from those of you who have taken it in regards to side effects.I was taking atenolol but have had some side effects,Thank you.

Hi Duke-
Until recently, the beta blockers like atenolol were often given for migraine..but came with a flurry of side effects, as you have found out!

Recent studies have shown really good results with ATACAND , particularly a Norwegian study whose results were published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

The drug reduced not only the number of headache and migraine days but also the length of the attacks. About 32 percent to 46 percent of the patients responded with at least a 50 percent reduction of one of the outcome measures, such as headache severity.
The head of the study, a Dr. Tronvik said, "these exciting results provide the first evidence for the potential of candesartan (Atacand) to provide effective relief for migraine sufferers, with an improved tolerability over currently prescribed therapies." He went on to say that "further investigation is needed, but a treatment with proven efficacy and good tolerability would have obvious benefits to both clinician and patient."

So there you have it......I hope it works for you...please let us know...You can be our guinea pig!

Good luck!

zuzu xxx

PS Atacand is an angiotensin 2 receptor blocker (an ARB) and the ARBs have the least side effects of all the hypertension meds.

duke,
I am a migraineur and also have hypertension. I started on 16 mg/day of Atacand on 2/19/03 and increased it to 32 mg/day on 7/2/03. I have not had any noticable side effects. It did not help my high BP at either dosage. It did not help my migraines at 16 mg but at 32 mg/day it was like someone flipped a switch. My headaches have been cut at least in half and probably more than that.

The reason why it's hard to tell you exactly how much they've dropped it that I started taking Cardura (an alpha blocker) and every time I have increased the doseage, I've gotten a headache for 2-3 days.

If I set that aside, I believe that Atacand is "the one" for me (for my migraines).

Let me know if you'd like to know anything else.

I have a follow-up with my neuro next week and will post again if there's anything else noteworthy related to Atacand.

Thanks for the great information.I will keep you updated on the headaches.