The drug, administered as an injection beneath the skin (subcutaneous), is available in India
A migraine drug has shown
to significantly reduce symptoms of depression in patients—the first trial to
show improvements in both the conditions using a single drug, researchers said.
In the study involving 540 patients, ‘fremanezumab’ was found to
reduce days of migraine in a month and symptoms of depression, compared to a
placebo (inactive substance producing no effects). The drug, administered as an
injection beneath the skin (subcutaneous), is available in India.
Published in The Journal of the American Medical Association
(JAMA) Neurology, the study is the first to demonstrate significant
improvements in migraine and depressive symptoms—often seen to co-exist in
patients—with a single drug, the researchers, including those from Albert
Einstein College of Medicine, US, said.
Patients of
migraine—a common neurological condition marked by recurring headaches—have
been studied to be two to four times more likely to develop depression. The two
conditions are suggested to have common genetic basis and biological processes
that control levels of brain chemicals, such as serotonin and glutamine.
The researchers said that patients having migraine and depression
are treated with antidepressants—which work by improving serotonin levels.
Serotonin helps regulate mood, and low levels can cause sadness, anxiety and
irritability.
However, antidepressants
are not uniformly effective for migraine. Further, data is limited on the
efficacy of migraine therapy in people also experiencing psychiatric
conditions.
The trial was conducted over a 28-week period at 61 centres across
12 countries, including the US, UK, France, and Germany, between July, 2020,
and August, 2022.
The participants were randomly assigned to receive a monthly dose
of fremanezumab (225 milligrams) or a placebo at the study’s start and at the
end of week four and week eight.
“Although treatment with fremanezumab and placebo both resulted in
clinically meaningful reductions in depressive symptoms, fremanezumab achieved
statistical significance vs placebo at week 8,” the authors wrote.
They suggested that the reduced depressive symptoms could be an indirect effect of the drug actively treating migraine, although further analyses are required to understand this.
The results “suggest that
fremanezumab was effective in a difficult-to-treat clinical population with
migraine and comorbid major depressive disorders and may also be effective in
alleviating psychiatric comorbidities, therefore reducing the cumulative burden
on patients.”
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