More Botox benefits discovered

Mitchell Brin

Andrew Blumenfeld

The benefits to receiving Botox have extended into the pain management and sleep medicine spectrums, according to two abstracts presented at the American Academy of Neurology Annual Meeting.

Pain management

“Although data is available on the efficacy and safety of onabotulinumtoxinA for the treatment of chronic migraine, limited data are available on the longer-term efficacy and safety,” Mitchell Brin, MD, senior vice president of global drug development and chief scientific officer for Botox, told Healio Family Medicine.

To gather more data, researchers conducted the COMPEL study — a 108-week multicenter, open-label study involving 715 patients (mean age, 43 years) in which Botox (onabotulinumtoxinA, Allergan) 155 U was administered every 12 weeks for nine treatment cycles.

By study’s end, researchers found onabotulinumtoxinA had reduced headache day frequency by 10.7 days (P < .0001) in the 373 patients that remained. Adverse events included neck pain, eyelid ptosis, injection-site pain and headache, but as a whole, these tended to decrease with repeated onabotulinumtoxinA treatment: 24.2% after the first cycle; 18.4% after the fourth cycle; and 12.2% after the ninth cycle. No new safety signals were identified.

Sleep medicine

In the second abstract, researchers used the same COMPEL study data to determine that the medication improved the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index score. Specifically, mean score differences of 12 ± 3.6 were observed at week 24; 11.7 ± 3.6 at week 60; 11.4 ± 3.5 at week 84; and 11 ± 3.7 at week 108 (P for trend < .0001).

One of the abstract’s authors conceded that more work into migraine treatments is needed.

“Chronic migraine is associated with numerous comorbidities, not all of which are completely understood,” Andrew Blumenfeld, MD, director of the Headache Center of Southern California, said in an interview. “It is important to continue to examine the impact of chronic migraine and treatment on these comorbidities in controlled and real-world studies.” – by Janel Miller

References:

Blumenfeld AM, et al. The effects of onabotulinumtoxinA treatment on the chronic migraine comorbidities of sleep and fatigue. Presented at: American Academy of Neurology Annual Meeting; April 21-27, 2018; Los Angeles.

Brin MF, et al. Long-term safety and tolerability of onabotulinumtoxinA treatment in chronic migraine patients: COMPEL analysis by treatment cycle. Presented at: American Academy of Neurology Annual Meeting; April 21-27, 2018; Los Angeles.

Disclosure: Brin is an employee of Allergan. Healio Family Medicine could not confirm other relevant financial disclosures at the time of publication.