The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-its-kind drug that reduces the number of migraines among people prone to these sometimes crippling headaches.
That's welcome news to some of the millions of Americans who suffer from these potentially debilitating headaches. Much more common in women than men, these throbbing headaches can also come with nausea, visual disturbances and sensitivity to light. People who suffer them frequently sometimes find themselves anxious, depressed and even disabled.
Most of the drugs on the market today are used to control the symptoms of migraine.
The new drug, Aimovig was approved by the FDA on Thursday. It's the first medicine in a new class that's designed to reduce the number of migraines among people who suffer them frequently. The medicine, known generically as erenumab-aooe, is being sold by Amgen in the U.S.
Aimovig and several other migraine drugs in development are based on research begun in the 1980s. Scientists found people having migraine attacks have high levels of something called "calcitonin gene–related peptide," or CGRP, in their blood, as Lauren Gravitz reported for Shots in February.