Erenumab is well-tolerated and demonstrates robust treatment persistence, according to the findings of a study published in Headache.
“The effectiveness of prophylactic migraine treatments is often undermined by poor treatment persistence. In clinical trials, erenumab has demonstrated efficacy and tolerability as a preventive treatment, but less is known about the longer-term treatment persistence with erenumab,” the researchers wrote.
In this real-world retrospective cohort study, researchers assessed 14,282 patients (median age, 47; 83% female) prescribed erenumab in Canada between September 2018 and December 2019. Sixty-six percent of the population of interest had chronic migraine at treatment initiation. All study subjects were analyzed for persistence, baseline demographics, clinical characteristics, and treatment patterns.
According to the results, 71% of patients were persistent to erenumab one year following treatment initiation. Within 360 days of treatment initiation, the investigators estimated that over 59% of patients who initiated erenumab at 70 mg escalated to 140 mg, and 4.4% of patients who initiated at 140 mg de-escalated to 70 mg.
“These results suggest that erenumab is well tolerated, and its uptake as a new class of prophylactic treatment for migraine in real-world clinical practice is not likely to be undermined by poor persistence when coverage for erenumab is easily available,” the researchers concluded.
Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34807454/
Keywords: dose, erenumab, migraine, persistence, prophylactic
