The migraine meds you need to know about
CGRP inhibitors have transformed migraine care in the past few years. Let’s break it down:
CGRP stands for calcitonin gene-related peptide. This is a neurotransmitter that is involved in causing migraine attacks. If you give CGRP to a person who is prone to migraine attacks, they will likely get a migraine. And if you block (or inhibit) CGRP, the migraine goes away.
CGRP inhibitors are the first class of medicines that have been developed to prevent migraine, so this is a big deal! We prescribe other meds to prevent migraine, but these meds were all developed to treat something else (blood pressure, seizures, depression, etc).
CGRP inhibitors have very few side effects and are safe for most people.
This class of drugs is available as a once a month injection that you do at home (similar to an epi pen) and also as a pill that you take every day or every other day. Some of the meds in this class are also used as rescue meds (to treat a migraine once it starts).
Currently this class of meds is FDA-approved for ages 18 years and older. If you are an adult and you have frequent migraine attacks and haven’t been on a CGRP inhibitor, talk with your doctor.
If you are an adult and your doctor prescribes one of these medications, you can likely get a savings card on the medication’s website. These savings cards typically make it so that you don’t pay more than $10 or so at the pharmacy for the medication.
Headache specialists like myself often use these medications “off-label” to treat our teenage patients who have not had good migraine control on other preventive medications. These drugs are currently being studied and will hopefully get FDA-approval in the near future. In the meantime, publications in journals like “Headache” have shown that these medicines have been used safely and effectively in older teenagers.
If a teen that you care about has frequent migraine attacks, see a headache specialist and ask whether CGRP inhibitors might be a good choice.
