Pharmacist Medication Insights: Aimovig for Migraines

Erenumab-aooe (Aimovig, Amgen) was approved by the FDA in 2018 for the preventive treatment of migraine in adults, making it the first approved preventive migraine treatment of its kind.

Erenumab-aooe is part of a new class of drugs that work by blocking the activity of calcitonin gene-related peptide, a molecule that is involved in migraine attacks. The treatment is given by once-monthly self injections.

The approval was based on data from 3 clinical trials that evaluated the efficacy of erenumab-aooe. In the first study, 955 participants with a history of episodic migraine were enrolled to compare treatment with erenumab-aooe with a placebo over the course of a 6-month period. Patients treated with erenumab-aooe experienced 1 to 2 fewer monthly migraine days on average compared with those on placebo.

The second study included 577 patients with a history of episodic migraine over a 3-month period. In this study, patients treated with erenumab-aooe, on average, had 1 fewer migraine day per month than those on placebo.

In the third study, 667 patients with a history of chronic migraine were evaluated over the course of 3 months. Patients treated with erenumab-aooe, on average, experienced 2 and a half fewer monthly migraine days than those receiving placebo.

The most common adverse effects reported in the trial were injection site reactions, and constipation.