Erenumab relieves migraines in hard-to-treat patients

A new drug, erenumab, reduces monthly migraine days in patients unsuccessfully treated with multiple other medications, according to a study presented at the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting.

“Clinical studies have demonstrated the efficacy and safety of erenumab in patients with episodic and chronic migraine,” Uwe Reuter, MD, of The Charité – University Medicine, Berlin, and colleagues wrote. “Current oral preventive therapies are associated with low adherence rates due to the lack of efficacy and/or poor tolerability. It is therefore important to assess the safety and efficacy of erenumab in patients who have failed multiple therapies.”

Reuter and colleagues conducted a 12-week, double-blind, randomized study known as LIBERTY. The researchers enrolled 246 patients with episodic migraine and randomly assigned them to receive injections of either 140 mg of erenumab (Amgen and Novartis) or placebo once a month for 3 months.

A total of 39% of the patients were unsuccessfully treated with two medications, 38% with three medications and 23% with four medications. Participants experienced an average of nine migraines a month.

The researchers found that patients in the erenumab group had a nearly three times higher likelihood of a 50% reduction or more in migraine days at 3 months, compared with those in the placebo group (30.3% vs. 13.7%). Additionally, patients in the erenumab group showed greater reductions in mean monthly migraine days (mean difference, –1.61; 95% CI, –2.7 to –0.52) and monthly acute migraine-specific medication days (mean difference, –1.73; 95% CI, –2.46 to –1.01) at 3 months than those in the placebo group.

Erenumab had a similar safety and tolerability profile to placebo. No severe adverse events were observed in patients treated with erenumab.

“Our results show that people who thought their migraines were difficult to prevent may actually have hope of finding pain relief,” Reuter said in a press release. “More research is now needed to understand who is most likely to benefit from this new treatment.” – by Alaina Tedesco

Reference:

Reuter U, et al. “Efficacy and safety of erenumab in episodic migraine patients with 2–4 prior preventive treatment failures: Results from the Phase 3b LIBERTY study.” Presented at: American Academy of Neurology Annual Meeting. April 21-27, 2018; Los Angeles.

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