Neurophysiological and biomolecular effects of erenumab in chronic migraine: An open label study

Anti-calcitonin gene-related peptide antibodies proved effective in the preventive treatment of chronic migraine. In this open label study, we aim to assess the effects of erenumab administration on neurophysiological and biomolecular profiles in a representative cohort of chronic migraine patients.

Forty patients with a history of chronic migraine for at least 12 months prior to enrollment, and previous failure of at least two different preventive therapies, were enrolled. After a 1-month observation period (T0), patients were treated with erenumab 70 mg s.c. (every 28 days) for a total of three administrations. At week 12, they returned for the end-of-protocol visit (T3). At T0 and T3, patients underwent recording of clinical features, recording of single stimulus (RTh), temporal summation (TST) thresholds of the nociceptive withdrawal reflex, venous blood sampling for miR-382-5p, and miR-34a-5p quantification.

At T3, 31 patients (77.5%) qualified as 30% Responders (reduction in monthly migraine days by at least 30% in the last 4-week observation period). RTh (T0: 15.4 ± 8.1 mA, T3: 19.7 ± 8.2 mA) as well as TST (T0: 11.2 ± 5.8 mA, T3: 13.4 ± 5.0 mA) significantly increased at T3 in 30% Responders (p = 0.001 for both), while we did not observe significant changes in NON-responder patients. MiR-382-5p and miR-34a-5p levels were significantly lower after erenumab administration in the overall study population (p = 0.015, and p = 0.001, respectively), without significant differences between 30% Responder and NON-responder groups.

Different migraine phenotypes, characterized by different treatment susceptibility, may exist as suggested by the divergent behavior between neurophysiological and biomolecular findings in 30% Responder vs. NON-responder patients.The study protocol was registered at clinicaltrials.gov (NCT04361721).