SYNOPSIS In order to assess whether an increased brain serotonin tone prevents migraine symptoms, eight migraine patients were treated with levotryptophan in the controlled trial. Plasma and lumbar CSF were collected approximately one hour after the last dose of amino acid on the second week during the headache‐free interval. Samples were also taken 4 hours after the onset of the headache attack. Visual evoked cortical potentials were recorded one hour after the ingestion of 500 mg of levotryptophan.In four of the eight migraine patients, headache indices were markedly lower during typptophan treatment than during placebo (levoleucine) treatment. Levotryptophan caused an elevation of plasma free and total tryptophan, and CSF‐tryptophan from their basal values obtained during placebo treatment. Therefore levotryptophan may be a worthwhile alternative for a selective and still incompletely characterized group of migraine patients.
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Kangasniemi et al. (1978) studied this question.