"Medicine" Knows | A New Weapon for Migraine Treatment! "Rimegepant" Arrives at HeYou Hospital

In the hot summer

Some people experience recurrent severe headaches

Accompanied by pallor, nausea, and vomiting during attacks

Others may experience flashing lights or “seeing stars”

I thought “headache so bad it makes you vomit”

Was just an exaggeration

Little did I know

This is simply stating a fact

There really is a kind of pain in this world

When it strikes

It can make your brain “shut down”

Pain so severe it prevents work and study

And it is very common

In China, there are as many as 130 million patients

It is

Migraine

Due to its high incidence, severe pain during attacks, and recurrent nature, migraine patients urgently need effective medications with rapid onset and long-lasting effects to improve their quality of daily life.

Thanks to the advanced management philosophy of HeYou Hospital and the advantages of its Brain Science and Neurological Medicine Center, the hospital recently introduced Rimegepant (Nurtec ODT), a new drug that can be used for both acute treatment and prevention of migraines, which is expected to offer a new treatment option for migraine patients and help them get rid of headache troubles.

The Chinese Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Migraine (2022 Edition)[1] state that migraine is a common neurological disorder characterized by recurrent, often unilateral, moderate to severe pulsating headaches, frequently accompanied by symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, photophobia, and phonophobia. Some patients may experience aura symptoms.

The rates of correct diagnosis and effective treatment for migraine in China are low, with widespread issues of insufficient preventive treatment and overuse of analgesic medications.

With advances in migraine research both domestically and internationally, particularly the discovery of new therapeutic targets such as calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), treatment modalities for migraine are continuously evolving.

Among them, the CGRP receptor antagonist Rimegepant, is currently one of the newest and most effective drugs for the acute treatment of migraine attacks.

Rimegepant is an oral calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) receptor antagonist, which exerts its clinical effects by blocking the binding of the CGRP ligand to its receptor, characterized by convenient administration, rapid onset of action, and long duration of effect.

Rimegepant was first launched in the United States in February 2020. As of 2022, over 2 million prescriptions had been written globally, and it has been recommended as a novel migraine treatment in migraine guidelines from multiple countries. In January 2024, it was approved for marketing in China.

In 2023, a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, multicenter Phase III trial[2] was conducted at 86 medical institutions (including 73 in China and 13 in South Korea).

Results showed that 2 hours after administration, compared with the placebo group, Rimegepant significantly relieved pain and improved migraine-related symptoms. The most common adverse reactions were proteinuria, nausea, and urinary tract infection (incidence ≥1%), and no serious adverse events occurred in either group.

Another study demonstrated[3] that for acute treatment of migraine, on-demand administration of Rimegepant during a single migraine attack effectively relieved pain and alleviated symptoms;

For preventive treatment of migraine, taking Rimegepant every other day reduced the number of monthly migraine days.

Over a longer period (up to 52 weeks), the effects of Rimegepant in reducing migraine attack frequency and improving quality of life were maintained, with generally good tolerability and no evidence of hepatotoxicity or cardiovascular toxicity in clinical trials.