Emerging Topics in Neurology

New topics in neurology really center around migraine treatment and prevention. Heidi Moawad, MD, discusses these treatments in this brief video.

TRANSCRIPT

Over the past several years there have been several very new modalities of migraine treatment and prevention. Most recently, the calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) antagonist category of medications just approved in 2018 where people get injections to prevent migraines.

This is very exciting, but it is also so new that we really don’t know what to expect in terms of efficacy, safety, patient response, and also how long people will want to continue to use these injections.

Other modalities that have been around for a couple of years are the neurostimulation devices. Initially, these were approved for prevention and then, more recently, one of these devices was also approved for treatment of acute migraine attacks. This is something that really gives patients the option to use migraine prevention that is not pharmacologic, not medication, with no danger of side effects.

These devices can be coupled with pharmacological products. People can use the abortive medications whether it’s just a simple non-steroidal or a triptan and they can take them along with the neurostimulation devices to have a wider approach of migraine management.

This is something that is very appealing to patients. Again, it is fairly new so we don’t have a lot of feedback yet as far as how patients are responding and whether it is practical to use a stimulation device so frequently for migraine prevention.

[This is especially true] when people go through periods where they don’t have a migraine for several weeks or months at a time. Are they still motivated to use these devices on a regular basis? And so these are all very new and exciting developments in neurology but we also really have to wait and see how it’s going to pan out as far as practicality for patients.