This is especially crucial in chronic migraine patients, who may be taking the medication for decades.Īnd as with many types of drugs, scientists don’t know how the medication will affect pregnant women ( SN Online: 5/30/18). Long-term effects on people, for example, will have to be followed closely, says Matthew Robbins, a neurologist at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. What questions remain about the drug?īecause Aimovig is new, there’s much researchers don’t know about it. Amgen and Novartis are currently offering two free doses to eligible patients, but after that the medication costs $6,900 per year for people paying out of pocket. There is also a potential barrier to Aimovig: cost. “It would be great if we had a new treatment that works substantially better than the treatments we now have,” says Loder, “but that is not the case here.” On average, Aimovig reduces the number of migraines by one to two each month, which is on par with current migraine medications. Unlike most current medications, Aimovig seems to have fewer daily side effects, which may mean that people take it more regularly and can stay on it for longer periods of time. Many of these drugs are only somewhat effective for migraines, and can have severe side effects including extreme drowsiness and brain fog. Most medications currently used to prevent migraines were created for other health issues, including high blood pressure, depression and epilepsy. Could the new drug be a better solution for migraine sufferers? The CGRP protein “key” is still floating around, but it can’t become activated. Aimovig, delivered once a month with an EpiPen-like injector, works by blocking the receptor for CGRP, reducing pain.īlocking the protein’s receptor is kind of like putting gum in a lock, says Elizabeth Loder, a neurologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and at Harvard Medical School. When it attaches to the receptor, CGRP widens blood vessels and can contribute to inflammation and pain transmission. The protein is released from nerve endings throughout the body, including in the meninges, the membranes that surround the brain. and Novartis, targets the receptor for a protein called calcitonin gene-related peptide, or CGRP, that is increased in people suffering a migraine attack. Aimovig, released by pharmaceutical companies Amgen Inc. These treatments work by using specially designed antibodies to target specific proteins and their receptors that contribute to disease. The new drug, Aimovig, generically called erenumab, is a type of monoclonal antibody treatment, a class of medications that resemble the antibodies that the body naturally produces to bind to infectious pathogens.
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