New Migraine Drugs Featured At IHS Meeting

There are at least eight new serotonin 5-HT1B/1D selective agonistsundergoing development for the treatment of migraine, and four of these are already reaching their first markets or in late-stage development. One of the major issues in the minds of clinicians attending the 8th Congress of the International Headache Society in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, earlier this month was whether this flood of new agents would offer any significant benefit over Glaxo Wellcome's Imigran (sumatriptan), the current gold standard of migraine therapy.

Peter Goadsby of the Institute of Neurology in London, UK, said that in order to be an advance, new agents should provide an improvement in at least one of the following attributes:

- efficacy; - tolerability; - reduction in the recurrence of headache; - improvement in patient choice; or - have a role in prevention.