Cheap medicines found to prevent migraine as effectively as expensive ones

Migraine is greater than only a headache. Typically the ache is accompanied by nausea, vomiting, gentle sensitivity, and sound sensitivity. Continual migraine could be disabling and should forestall many, particularly girls, from contributing to working life.

Nonetheless, it typically takes a very long time for migraine sufferers to discover a remedy that works nicely for them. Researchers on the Norwegian Middle for Headache Analysis (NorHead) have used knowledge from the Norwegian Prescription Register to take a look at which medicines greatest forestall migraine in folks in Norway:

“There has now been performed a whole lot of analysis on this topic earlier than. This may occasionally weaken the standard of the remedy and enhance the price of remedy for this affected person group,” says the chief of the examine, Professor Marte-Helen Bjørk on the Division of Scientific Drugs, College of Bergen.

Three medicines had higher impact than the primary selection of medicines

The researchers used nationwide register knowledge from 2010 to 2020 to estimate the remedy impact. They measured this by trying on the consumption of acute migraine medicines earlier than and after beginning preventive treatment, and investigated how lengthy the folks with migraine used the totally different preventive therapies. 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 folks stopped rapidly on the preventive medicines, the preventive medicine was interpreted as having little impact. If the preventive medication was used on lengthy, uninterrupted intervals, and we noticed a lower within the consumption of acute medicines, we interpreted the preventive medication as having a great impact,” Bjørk explains.

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

“The latter two medicines are additionally established medicines used for despair, chronic pain and high cholesterol, respectively, whereas CGRP inhibitors are developed and used particularly for chronic 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 reveals that some established and cheaper medicines can have an analogous remedy 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 scientific examine to measure the impact of established cholesterol-lowering medicines as a preventive measure in opposition to persistent and episodic migraine.