A new drug was announced that promises to cut in half the length of attacks for migraine sufferers. Erenumab, a laboratory-made antibody that blocks CGRP, a molecule involved in the transmission of pain, is the first drug in 20 years shown to counter migraines, which can last 72 hours.
Each year 8.5 million people in Britain suffer a migraine and it is estimated that there are about 200,000 attacks every day.
The phase 3 trial data for erenumab, collected from nearly 1,000 patients, showed that the drug typically cut out between three and four “migraine days” per month. Migraine duration was reduced by at least 50 per cent in half the patients. The trial compared patients taking erenumab for six months with others given a placebo.
Peter Goadsby, from King’s College Hospital in London, who led the research, said the findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, clearly showed that blocking the CGRP pathway could reduce the impact of migraines. “The results represent a real transition for migraine patients from poorly understood, re-purposed treatments, to a specific migraine-designed therapy,” he said.