GLP-1 Antidiabetics Also Active Against Obese Migraines

A latest antidiabetic generation belonging to the GLP-1 family, drugs that they also have weight loss as a side effect, it has been successfully tested to treat migraine in patients obese people, who suffer from chronic migraines up to 30% more compared to non-obese people and are less sensitive to usual treatments. The study, entirely Italian and published in the journal Headache, was conducted by researchers at the University Frederick II of Naples, led by the neurologist Roberto De Simone, of 31 people with a body mass index greater than 30 who they no longer responded even to the latest anti-migraine drugs generation, such as anti-CGRP monoclonals. These patients (26 females and 5 males, because this type of migraine is prevalent in the female sex) has been administered the drug liraglutide (GLP-1) in addition to standard therapy (65% of them treated with monoclonal antibodies anti-CGRP). After 12 weeks the new experimental therapy has halved the number of days of pain in about half of the patients and reduced it by three-quarters in 23% of them. De Simone points out that this occurred with a loss of negligible weight, and that this indicates that the effects on the pain were independent of those on the alterations metabolic disorders due to overweight, which have always been invoked as being implicated in the headaches of these subjects. On the contrary, for the neurologist Neapolitan, the explanation is that "these effects would point directly on the mechanisms of pain related to hypertension obesity-induced intracranial hypertension, which causes an increase of the pressure of the liquor (or cerebrospinal fluid) in which the brain and the entire central nervous system are immersed", which also escapes investigation with the ophthalmoscope. "This result, obtained with an open study, is not controlled, will need to be confirmed with larger and more controlled studies - concludes De Simone - but it is extremely promising and opens the road to a profound reinterpretation of migraine and its mechanisms, especially for the identification of a new and promising therapeutic target aimed at controlling intracranial pressure".