Headache and Migraine

Results of a pooled analysis of 3 clinical trials suggest that the magnitude of fingolimod’s treatment effect in MS is not affected by the presence of migraine or headache in patients.

A new tool to add to your armamentarium?

To kick off Migraine and Headache Awareness Month, the latest findings reported here may influence your approaches to diagnosis, treatment, and prevention and help you keep your patients informed.

This device, which is being prepared to launch in the US market later this year, is an alternative treatment option for acute migraine.

Around three times more women than men have migraine. This marked difference in prevalence is one of the most well-known features of the illness. Here's what history tells us.

The director of the Jefferson Headache Center at Jefferson University Hospital discussed the need for physicians to revisit how they treat patients with chronic migraine who have developed medication overuse headache.

The anti-CGRP agent was shown to decrease monthly migraine days, in addition to having higher ≥50% and ≥75% responder rates, reductions in acute medication use, and enhancements in MSQ RF-R domain scores for patients who failed ≥2 more preventives.

Compared to sham stimulation, the REN device was more effective in achieving pain relief and relief from the most bothersome symptom at 2 hours posttreatment and was maintained at 48 hours post-stimulation.

The assistant professor of neurology at Mount Sinai Health System spoke about the recent trend toward approaching migraine in a more holistic fashion, and the incorporation of nonpharmacologic options for patients with the chronic headache condition.

Patients across all dosing groups saw statistically significant and clinically relevant reductions in migraine days during the 12-week treatment period compared with the placebo group.

The anti-CGRP drug, which was recently approved for the prevention of migraine in adults, showed significant reductions in weekly cluster headache attack frequency by week 3 in 76% of patients.

A 75 mg orally dissolving tablet formulation of the calcitonin gene-related peptide receptor antagonist met both co-primary end points of freedom from the patient-indicated most bothersome symptom and freedom from pain at 2 hours.

Women are three times more susceptible to migraine than are men. The difference is so pronounced that men with migraine are at risk for being underdiagnosed and undertreated. Why such a discrepancy?

Cognitive deficits are gender based, opioids complicate prophylactic treatment, patients with migraine seen by ophthalmologists-find concise summaries of these and other findings here.

Neurology News Network for the week ending April 27, 2019.

A prespecified futility analysis of a phase 3 study revealed that the primary endpoint of mean change from baseline in the weekly average number of cluster headache attacks during the 4-week treatment period is unlikely to be met.

Alder stated that it expected to receive a PDUFA action date within 74 days of the submission for eptinezumab and is planning a commercial launch of the anti-CGRP agent by early 2020.

The chief executive officer of Alder Biopharmaceuticals detailed where the intravenous anti-CGRP treatment will fit into the marketplace and how the migraine prevention therapy will make an impact in treating patients.

What's your diagnosis for a 45-year-old woman who experienced strange symptoms after taking an advanced yoga class?

A review of newly implemented primary end points—pain freedom and most bothersome symptom freedom at 2 hours—used in 8 clinical trials may help to guide future migraine researchers in the design of acute treatment trials.

Responses from 1300 physicians suggest that increasing patient load and adding ancillary services may be the key to increasing annual income.

Alder Biopharmaceuticals’ monoclonal antibody was recently submitted in a BLA to the FDA and is on pace to hit the newly crowded preventive migraine market in early 2020.

The study also added to a growing base of findings which suggest that patients who have failed preventive medications prior to trial participation have lower placebo responses, which could have implications for clinical trial design.

Data from the EVOLVE-1 and EVOLVE-2 phase 3 clinical trials suggest that galcanezumab (Emgality, Eli Lilly) can maintain ≥50% responder rates equivalent to that of placebo while reducing more monthly migraine days for 5 months after halting treatment.

Neurology News Network for the week of April 13, 2019.