The FDA has recently approved three new drug treatments for preventive treatment of migraines in adults. On September 28, it was noted that officials with the FDA had approved Eli Lilly’s preventive migraine treatment galcanezumab-gnlm, also known as Emgality. You can read more about Emgality here. On September 14, the FDA announced approval for fremanezumab-vfrm, also known as Ajovy, and you can read about that option here. And as we reported last May, the FDA had approved Aimovig, which was the first FDA-approved preventive migraine treatment in a new class of drugs that work by blocking the activity of calcitonin gene-related peptide, a molecule that is involved in migraine attacks. You can read the full press release on Aimovig here.
About Headaches
It is estimated that over 45 million people in the United States suffer from acute or chronic headaches,[1] with headaches accounting for one emergency room visit every 10 seconds. 18% of women and 8% of men between the ages of 18 and 55 suffer from what is technically defined as a migraine by the medical community. It is believed if those criteria are slightly relaxed, the number of individuals suffering from debilitating headaches is far greater. Headaches are the number two cause of disability in the United States, and headaches are one of the top causes for the loss of workplace productivity. Because the medical community has not yet fully embraced “headache” as a medical condition, it is believed that many headache sufferers remain undiagnosed.
Exciting Changes In Our Practice
We have expanded our group of providers, and are developing a new Headache Membership program – click here for more details.
1. See migraineinformation.org for more information on this statistic.