Antihistamines provide greater acute vertigo relief than benzodiazepines, according to US doctors who say use of the latter drug class should be discouraged in affected patients.

The advice is based on a literature review that found no evidence to support benzodiazepine use for this indication, regardless of the underlying cause.

At the same time, the authors cautioned that daily antihistamine use for acute vertigo may also be of limited value as symptom relief was unlikely to last longer than two hours.

Writing in JAMA Neurology, the emergency medicine physicians from Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, reported findings from their meta-analysis of 17 clinical trials that included some 1600 patients to assess the efficacy of the two drug classes.