Aimovig, Emgality show similar therapeutic benefit for headaches

Patients with migraine who switched from Aimovig to Emgality to treat their headaches reported similar improvements between the two treatments, according to research presented at the virtual American Headache Society Annual Meeting.

The American Headache Society canceled its annual meeting because of COVID-19, but many researchers recorded audio of their scheduled presentations, which were posted on the society’s website.

Alise Pham, DO, and Rebecca Burch, MD, from Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, performed a retrospective chart review of 100 patients who took Aimovig (erenumab, Novartis and Amgen), then switched to Emgality (galcanezumab, Eli Lilly and Co.). Both drugs are calcitonin gene-related peptide receptor antagonists approved by the FDA for the preventive treatment of migraine.

“Eighty-five percent of the patients were female, 92% were white, and the age range of the patients was 20 to 80 years,” Pham said.

Pham and Burch reported that 51 of the 100 patients reported improvement while taking erenumab. Of those same 100 patients, exactly half reported improvement after switching to galcanezumab. Eleven patients who took erenumab — and two who took galcanezumab — initially reported improvement in headache pain, but then their headache pain worsened. In addition, there were 35 patients who reported no therapeutic benefit from erenumab and 29 patients who reported no improvement from galcanezumab.

Also, among erenumab recipients, 53 cited lack of efficacy, 29 cited adverse events and 14 cited “insurance difficulties” as their reason to stop taking that medication. Among galcanezumab recipients, the numbers of these patients were 21, 8 and 2, respectively.

“The most common side effect was constipation reported in 35% of our patients compared to 8% in galcanezumab,” Pham said. “For galcanezumab, the most common side effect was injection site reaction.”