Galcanezumab effect on “whole pain burden” and multidimensional outcomes in migraine patients with previous unsuccessful treatments: a real-world experience

BACKGROUND: Clinical trials have demonstrated galcanezumab as safe and effective in migraine prevention. However, real-life data are still lacking and overlook the impact of galcanezumab on those different migraine facets strongly contributing to migraine burden. Herein we report the clinical experience from an Italian real-world setting using galcanezumab in patients with migraine experiencing previous unsuccessful preventive treatments. METHODS: Forty-three patients with migraine and failure of at least 3 migraine preventive medication classes received monthly galcanezumab 120 mg s.c. At the first administration and after 3 and 6 months, patients underwent extensive interviews to assess clinical parameters of disease severity. Furthermore, validated questionnaires were administered to explore migraine-related disability, impact, and quality of life as well as symptoms of depression or anxiety, pain catastrophizing, sleep quality and the ictal cutaneous allodynia. RESULTS: After the third and the sixth administration of monthly galcanezumab 120 mg s.c., headache attacks frequency reduced from 20.56 to 7.44 and 6.37 headache days per month, respectively. Moreover, a significant improvement in headache pain intensity (from 8.95 to 6.84 and 6.21) and duration (from 9.03 to 3.75 and 2.38) as well as in scores assessing migraine related disability and impact, depressive and anxious symptoms, and pain catastrophizing was observed. Furthermore, we demonstrated a significant reduction in the values of “whole pain burden”, a composite score derived from the product of the average of headache frequency, intensity, and duration in the last three months. CONCLUSION: Real-world data support monthly galcanezumab 120 mg s.c. as a safe and effective preventive treatment in reducing headache frequency, intensity, and duration as well as comorbid depressive or anxious symptoms, pain catastrophizing and quality of life in both episodic and chronic migraine patients with previous unsuccessful preventive treatments. Furthermore, we demonstrated that monthly galcanezumab 120 mg s.c. is able to induce a significant improvement in the scores of “whole pain burden”. The latter is a reliable and easy-to-handle tool to be employed in clinical setting to evaluate the effectiveness of preventive drugs (in this case, galcanezumab) or when the decision of continuing the treatment with anti-CGRP mAbs is mandatory. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s10194-022-01436-6.