Tag Archives: #headache

Headache: Clinical Trial Finds Oral Atogepant Reduced Monthly Migraine Days

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Dr. Trugman

PainRelief.com Interview with:

Joel M. Trugman, MD
Associate Vice President
Neuroscience Development
AbbVie

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study?  What are the main findings?

Response: Migraine is a disabling chronic disease characterized by recurrent headache attacks and associated symptoms, including nausea, phonophobia, or sensitivity to sound, and photophobia, or sensitivity to light.

The ADVANCE clinical trial is a phase 3, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial and examined the safety and efficacy of atogepant, an oral, small-molecule calcitonin gene-related peptide receptor antagonist in patients with episodic migraine. The primary efficacy endpoint was the change from baseline in mean monthly migraine days (MMD) across the 12-week treatment period. This analysis that was recently published examined the efficacy of atogepant using 4 levels of mean monthly migraine day (MMD) responder rates. 

This analysis found that all doses of atogepant significantly increased the proportion of participants who achieved a ≥25%, ≥50%, ≥75% and 100% reduction in mean monthly migraine days over 12 weeks of treatment.

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Study Reports on Adolescent Headaches During Covid Restrictions

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Dr Ayşe Nur Özdag Acarli
Ermenek State Hospital, Karaman, Turkey

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study? 

Response: Headache is the most common neurological problem in children and adolescents. Various factors can contribute to headache such as school, sleep, physical activity, electronic devices, mental health problems and socioeconomic conditions.

For young people, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a striking change on every aspect of life such as school closure, online education from home, fewer academic pressures, more self care at home. Early studies, examined shorter-term effects of the pandemic, reported a reduction on the prevalence of headache and chronic pain in adolescents during COVID-19, which was attributed to less school-related stress. However, in my personal clinical experience, young patients suffered more frequent and severe headaches during the pandemic, especially after the first year of the pandemic. However, literature has been lacking in the long term effects of the pandemic on headache in adolescents.

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Large Study of Painful Cluster Headaches Has Revealing Findings

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Mark J. Burish, MD, PhD.
Assistant Professor
Vivian L. Smith Department of Neurosurgery
Director, Will Erwin Headache Research Center
McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston

Dr. Mark Burish – Neurosurgery
Photo by Dwight C. Andrews/The University of Texas Medical School at Houston Office of Communications

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study?  Would you describe cluster headaches?

Response: Cluster headache is a disease associated with excruciating attacks of one-sided pain around the eye – patients regularly say it is more painful than childbirth, kidney stones, or gunshot wounds.  The attacks last between 15 minutes and 3 hours and can occur up to 8 times per day.  During an attack, patients will often have changes around the eye (such as a watery or bloodshot or droopy eye) changes in the nose (like congestion and a runny nose), and a restless feeling like they can’t sit still.  It is called “cluster” headache because, for most patient, the headaches occur every day for several weeks then go away for the rest of the year, only to come back the following year.  This is called “episodic” cluster headache, though there is another version called “chronic” cluster headache in which the headaches occur at least 9 months a year.

Cluster headache is found in about 1 in 1000 patients.  Because it is uncommon, there have not been a lot of large international studies investigating basic questions like the age that these headaches start and the differences from patient to patient.  There is a great need to understand more about this disorder at every level.  So two researchers from the University of West Georgia (Larry Schor and Stuart Pearson) performed a large epidemiology study on cluster headache because very few have been done.  They created an online questionnaire and advertised it internationally.  They ended up obtaining the largest study in terms of participants and the most international study ever performed (at least to our knowledge).  They then asked for help analyzing it from several physicians (including myself) and statisticians.  I felt very fortunate that they reached out to me and I really enjoyed working on this project because I think it gives us a lot of insights into cluster headache.

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Infused VYEPTI Provided Pain Relief When Initiated During a Migraine Attack

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Roger Cady, MD
VP Neurology
Lundbeck Pharmaceutical
La Jolla Research Center
San Diego, CA 92121

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study? 

Response: The RELIEF study evaluated how preventive migraine candidates may benefit from a VYEPTI infusion during an active migraine attack when administered within 1 to 6 hours of a moderate to severe migraine attack. VYEPTI is the first and only intravenous (IV) infusion approved for the preventive treatment of migraine in adults.

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