Reversion of chronic to episodic migraine in working age and botulinum toxin-resistant patients treated with fremanezumab: A real-life study.

Objectives: The objectives of this real-life study were to analyze the reversion of chronic migraine (CM) to episodic migraine (EM) with fremanezumab, evaluate its benefit on the symptomatology, and determine the influence of possible clinical features on the reversion.

Background: The clinical manifestations of CM have a high impact on the quality of life of patients, and monoclonal antibodies such as fremanezumab are used as prophylactic treatment.

Methods: Diagnosed CM patients treated for at least 3 months with monthly fremanezumab were interviewed. The data to assess efficacy were before treatment and at the time of the interview: monthly headache days (MHDs), daily headache hours (DHHs), monthly symptomatic medication days (MSMDs), percentage of patients with symptomatic medication overuse (SMO), and pain intensity with the numerical rating scale (NRS) score. Possible predictors of reversion were analyzed: percentage of patients treated for at least 12 months, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, depression, anxiety, symptomatic control with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), triptans or both, and amitriptyline prophylaxis.

Results: A total of 54 patients were included, of whom 40 (74.1%) were converters to EM. There were significant improvements in converters compared to pre-treatment in MHDs (28.0 vs. 5.0 days), as well as on the variables DHHs, MSMDs, and SMO. The percentage of erenumab failures was significantly higher in non-converters than in converters, as was the percentage of patients with anxiety.

Conclusions: High reversion from CM to EM was achieved with fremanezumab and notable symptomatological improvement, establishing previous failure to erenumab and anxiety as possible detrimental factors for reversion.