New Drug Coming Early 2020: Reyvow
After many years of waiting, a completely new type of migraine drug is projected to hit local pharmacies in the USA in only a few weeks.
Feel like you’ve heard that before? Of course you have. New medications and even new devices have been hitting the market at an unusual rate over the past couple of years. But yes – as the first paragraph stated – this is once again a new class of migraine medication, something that may help some people who haven’t found a good option in the past.
The new type of drug from Eli Lilly and Company is known as a 5-HT1F receptor agonist, and the drugs in this class are referred to as “ditans”. And there is something else that sets this drug apart from the crowd of the recent new drug approvals. It’s an abortive drug – something to be taken when a migraine attack hits. So this is not another preventative, which has been all the rage lately.
Reyvow, or lasmiditan (or LY573144), is a drug we started talking about in 2012, so it’s been quite the wait. Way back then, when there were more concerns about migraine drugs affecting the cardiovascular system, lasmiditan was considered unique because it didn’t seem to carry the same dangers. In fact, people with risk of cardiovascular disease were eventually included in clinical trials.
Clinical trials have shown effectiveness for some patients within 30 minutes, with the common 100mg or 200mg doses. Reyvow seems to alleviate not only pain, but also sensitivity to light and noise, and nausea.
Long term testing over a year also showed that there were no serious side effects (in particular cardiovascular issues). The most common side effect was some dizziness, and rarely some sleepiness. But remember, these are drugs you take when you are already having a migraine attack. And although a minority of patients did experience some dizziness, over the course of the year the side effects seemed to diminish.
However, as with many abortive migraine drugs, it is recommended that patients avoid driving for a few hours after taking Reyvow.
Preventative drugs may be taken at the same time as Reyvow.
The FDA is currently deciding how to classify Reyvow, and their decision is expected in January 2020. After that, Reyvow will be made available in the United States.
As with the other medications we’ve seen hitting the market recently, Reyvow is not a miracle drug. However, every new approach brings with it the potential that the drug will help patients who have never been helped before, patients who have been unable to take other drugs because of side effects or other health concerns, or patients who are simply not satisfied with their current meds.
So yes, the release of Reyvow is big news – and we wait to see how it will help many of our readers.