Rimegepant Acute Migraine Treatment Reduces Monthly Migraine Days
As published in Cephalalgia Reports, in an open-label long-term study (NCT03266588) acute treatment of migraine attacks with 75 mg rimegepant (Nurtec ODT; Biohaven, New Haven, CT) reduced the number of monthly migraine days (MMDs). Rimegepant 75 mg repeated use shows no signal of medication overuse headache (MOH).
Clinically significant reduction in MMD frequency was observed over time regardless of baseline migraine frequency in participants (n=1,044) who had low-frequency, moderate frequency, and high-frequency mean MMDs of 8.7, 11.5, and 14.8, respectively.
The likelihood of reaching more than a 30% or 50% reduction in MMD from baseline was 5.47 (95% CI: 4.27, 7.00) and 5.74 (95% CI: 4.22, 7.81), respectively for people with the lowest MMD at baseline. Time to reduction in migraine attack frequency correlated with MMD
Gil L'Italien PhD, senior vice president, Global Health Economics and Outcomes Research & Epidemiology, Biohaven, and lead author of the study, commented, "The Kaplan-Meier methodology provides for a novel assessment of migraine treatment efficacy and enables the ability to estimate adjusted hazard ratios for time to these outcomes (Cox regression). These observations of migraine frequency reduction from repeated effective acute rimegepant treatment show reductions in migraine days after repeated acute therapy and are consistent with rimegepant known preventive effects."
Dr. Johnston commented, "The study results confirm that continued use of rimegepant as an acute treatment to help stop a migraine can also lessen the number of migraine attacks a person has over time. This is a significant added benefit that healthcare providers and patients should consider when determining the right acute treatment plan."
This was a post-hoc analysis of adults with more than 6 MMD at baseline who self-administered rimegepant 75 mg orally once daily for acute treatment of migraine up to 52-weeks. The mean number of doses per 28 days at the end of the study was approximately 4, 9, and 14 for the lowest to highest frequency cohorts, respectively.