Ozempic-like drugs used to treat type 2 diabetes and obesity may also treat migraine, even when the medications don’t trigger weight loss, early research suggests.
A preliminary report, published in the journal Headache and presented June 21 at the European Academy of Neurology (EAN) conference, suggests that liraglutide — a drug used to treat obesity and diabetes — slashed the number of days patients experienced severe migraines by almost half. Liraglutide belongs to a class of drugs called GLP-1 agonists, which also includes semaglutide, the active ingredient in the diabetes drug Ozempic and weight-loss drug Wegovy.
But while the idea of treating migraines with these drugs is “extremely innovative and forward-thinking,” the new results should be taken with caution. That’s because the trial was small and didn’t include a comparison group that didn’t use the medication, Dr. Alex Sinclair, a neurologist at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. who wasn’t involved in the study, told Live Science.
“This is an absolutely tantalizing research study because it gives us a really interesting idea of a new mechanism of delivering drugs for migraine,” Sinclair told Live Science. “But it is very preliminary.”
This “very important and exciting finding” could potentially provide “another treatment option for patients with chronic migraine, especially for those who did not previously respond to other current available treatments,” said Dr. Chia-Chun Chiang, an associate professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota who wasn’t involved in the study.
Migraine days cut in half
To assess the effect of liraglutide on migraine, Dr. Simone Braca, a neurologist at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy, and colleagues gave 31 patients with obesity and high-frequency or chronic migraine 0.6 milligrams of liraglutide daily for one week, followed by 1.2 mg daily for the next 11 weeks.
After 12 weeks, nearly half of the patients reported that their number of headache days per month had dropped, from an average of 20 to nine. This was a “huge” effect, Braca told Live Science.
Seven people saw their headache days drop by 75%, and one patient’s migraines disappeared completely. Overall, the patients also reported a large drop in how much migraine impeded their daily lives. Importantly, the participants did not shed weight during the study. This suggests the improvement…
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