Migraine is greater than only a headache. Usually the ache is accompanied by nausea, vomiting, mild sensitivity, and sound sensitivity. Continual migraine may be disabling and should stop many, particularly girls, from contributing to working life.

Nonetheless, it usually takes a very long time for migraine sufferers to discover a therapy that works nicely 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 greatest stop migraine in individuals in Norway:

There has now been accomplished a number of analysis on this topic earlier than. This will likely weaken the standard of the therapy and enhance the price of therapy for this affected person group.”

Marte-Helen Bjørk, Research Chief, Professor, Division of Medical Drugs, 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 wanting on the consumption of acute migraine medicines earlier than and after beginning preventive therapy, and investigated how lengthy the individuals with migraine used the totally different preventive remedies. A complete of over 100 thousand migraine sufferers had been within the examine.

“When the withdrawal of acute migraine medicines modified little after beginning preventive medicines, or individuals stopped rapidly on the preventive medicines, the preventive medication 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 good impact”, Bjørk explains.

As a rule, so-called beta blockers are used as the primary alternative to stop 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 melancholy, persistent ache and excessive ldl cholesterol, respectively, whereas CGRP inhibitors are developed and used particularly for persistent 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 firms).

“Our evaluation reveals that some established and cheaper medicines can have an analogous 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 persistent and episodic migraine.