Andrew Charles, MD: Top migraine medication effective for preventing migraines, treating drug-induced headaches is hard to access

"A new study shows that FDA-approved oral migraine drug atogepant is effective for relieving difficult-to-treat “medication overuse headaches” that are the result of using too much of other pain relieving medications. However, patients often have to jump through hoops to get it covered by their insurance company.

Migraines affect nearly one in eight adults in the U.S. Migraines are also the leading cause of disability in adults under 50 years of age. in the United States. This high number underscores the need for better treatments for people with migraines.

Atogepant, marketed under the brand Qulipta by the company AbbVie, is part of a new class of migraine medications known as CGRP inhibitors, so named because they block a protein called calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), which has been found to be a cause of migraines.

Qulipta is one of only two FDA-approved CGRP inhibitors taken as a pill for the prevention of migraine headaches, the other being rimegepant, marketed as Nurtec by Pfizer. All other drugs in this class used for migraine prevention are injectables.

The American Headache Society’s (AHS) recently released a position statement says that CGRP inhibitors should be the first treatment a doctor prescribes for migraines. But Insurance companies often require patients to go through a process known as “step therapy” where they have to try less expensive interventions before they can get access to Qulipta or one of the other CGRP inhibitors.

“CGRP-targeting therapies, unlike most other migraine treatments that were "borrowed" from other indications like antidepressants, blood pressure medications or seizure medications, were developed specifically to treat migraines based upon a solid foundation of evidence,” according to Dr. Andrew Charles, professor of Neurology at UCLA and lead author of the American Headache Society's position statement."

Read more at ABC News.