New Migraine Treatment Could Help Reduce Pain

BOSTON (CBS) - There may be new relief on the horizon for migraine sufferers. A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine finds that a drug belonging to a new generation of treatments helped reduce pain in people with migraine headaches.

Many people with acute migraine headaches take triptan drugs which were introduced back in the 1990s. But these medications don't work for everyone and can cause side effects.

Now there's a new class of medications called gepants which block a protein involved in migraines. In a clinical trial of more than 1,000 men and women with migraines, almost 20-percent of those who took one of these news pills, called Rimegepant, were pain free two hours later, compared to only 12-percent in the placebo group and there were very few reported side effects.

The drug is awaiting approval by the FDA.