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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Pain Res.

Sec. Headache

Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpain.2025.1670648

Drug-Induced Headache reports: A Comprehensive Disproportionality and Time-to-Onset Pharmacovigilance Study Using the FAERS Database (2018-2024)

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Jouf University Clinical Pharmacy Department, Sakaka, Saudi Arabia
  • 2Department of Clinical Pharmacy, College of Pharmacy, King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia
  • 3Eastern Health Cluster, Dammam, Saudi Arabia
  • 4Department of family and community medicine, college of medicine, Jouf University, Sakaka, Saudi Arabia
  • 5School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Health and Medical sciences, Taylors University, Selangor, Malaysia
  • 6University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Pakistan
  • 7Clinical Laboratory Science, Medical Applied College, Sakaka, Saudi Arabia
  • 8Department of Pharmacology, College of Pharmacy, Jouf University, Sakaka, Saudi Arabia
  • 9Department of Pharmaceutics, college of pharmacy, Jouf University, Sakaka, Saudi Arabia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Background: Headache is a common adverse drug reaction (ADR) across diverse therapeutic classes, yet systematic evaluations of drug-associated headaches in real-world settings are limited. This study aimed to explore the association between various medications and the reporting of headache as an ADR using the FDA-Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS). Methods: We conducted a retrospective disproportionality analysis using FAERS data from Q1-2018 to Q4-2024. Duplicate reports were removed per FDA guidelines. Reports with headache as an adverse event and drugs classified as Primary Suspect were included. Disproportionality metrics — Reporting Odds Ratio (ROR) and Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR)—were calculated to identify signals. Drugs were classified according to the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical(ATC) classification system, and time-to-onset analyses were performed. Results: A total of 313,166 headache-associated cases were identified. Females (66.66%) and patients aged 51–65 years (21.35%) were most commonly affected. The drugs with the highest headache risk based on ROR included glecaprevir/pibrentasvir (ROR=10.445), sofosbuvir/velpatasvir (ROR=9.729), and eptinezumab-jjmr (ROR=6.775). Top frequently reported drugs were apremilast, treprostinil, and adalimumab. Calcium homeostasis agents (ROR = 6.268) and systemic antivirals (ROR=4.259) emerged as the ATC classes with the highest headache signal strength. Early-onset headaches (≤7days) were particularly associated with ofatumumab and fingolimod. Late-onset headaches (>90days) were linked to treprostinil and infliximab-dyyb. Conclusion: This large-scale pharmacovigilance study identifies multiple drugs and therapeutic classes with significant associations to headache as an ADR. These findings highlight the need for proactive headache monitoring, particularly during early treatment phases, and warrant further prospective investigations to understand mechanisms and preventive strategies.

Keywords: Headache, drug safety, Adverse Drug Reaction, Disproportionality analysis, Time-to-onset

Received: 21 Jul 2025; Accepted: 07 Oct 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Alzarea, ishaqui, Maqsood, Alanazi, Alsaidan, Mallhi, Kumar, Orayj, Alshahrani, Alhassan, Alzarea and Alsaidan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: azfar ishaqui, azfar.hd@hotmail.com

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