Nonetheless, it usually takes a very long time for migraine sufferers to discover a therapy that works properly for them. Researchers on the Norwegian Middle for Headache Analysis (NorHead) have used knowledge from the Norwegian Prescription Register to have a look at which medicines finest stop migraine in individuals in Norway:

“There has now been accomplished a whole lot of analysis on this topic earlier than. This will likely weaken the standard of the therapy and improve the price of therapy for this affected person group,” says the chief of the examine, Professor Marte-Helen Bjørk on the Division of Medical Medication, College of Bergen.

Three medicines had higher impact than the primary alternative of medicines

The researchers used nationwide register knowledge from 2010 to 2020 to estimate therapy impact. They measured this by trying on the consumption of acute migraine medicines earlier than and after beginning preventive therapy, and investigated how lengthy the individuals with migraine used the completely different preventive remedies. A complete of over 100 thousand migraine sufferers have been within the examine.

“When the withdrawal of acute migraine medicines modified little after beginning preventive medicines, or individuals stopped shortly on the preventive medicines, the preventive drugs was interpreted as having little impact. If the preventive drugs was used on lengthy, uninterrupted durations, and we noticed a lower within the consumption of acute medicines, we interpreted the preventive drugs as having good impact,” Bjørk explains.

As a rule, so-called beta blockers are used as the primary alternative to forestall migraine assaults, however the researchers discovered that particularly three medicines had higher preventive impact than these: CGRP inhibitors, amitriptyline and simvastatin.

“The latter two medicines are additionally established medicines used for despair, power ache and excessive ldl cholesterol, respectively, whereas CGRP inhibitors are developed and used particularly for power migraine,” says the professor.

Can have nice significance for the price of well being care

CGRP inhibitors are costlier than the opposite medicines. In 2021 their reimbursement amounted to 500 million NOK (not together with reductions given by pharma corporations).

“Our evaluation exhibits that some established and cheaper medicines can have an identical therapy impact because the costlier ones. This can be of nice significance each for the affected person group and Norwegian well being care” says Bjørk.

The researchers at NorHead have already began work on a big medical examine to measure the impact of established cholesterol-lowering medicines as a safety measure towards power and episodic migraine.

Details:

The examine was accomplished in collaboration with Aud Nome Dueland (Headache Norway, Sandvika Neurocenter), Frank Sørgaard (former medical advisor at Novartis) and Solveig Borkenhagen with a number of from Oslo Economics. The outcomes are printed within the  journal European Journal of Neurology.