A new medication is allowing hope to migraine sufferers.

“When I have a migraine, it starts at the base of my skull. It’ll radiate around the front of my head, and then it will also radiate down into my shoulders,” Mandy Grogan, a migraine sufferer, said.

Grogan’s migraines accompany the classic symptoms.

“Sensitivity to light, fluorescent lighting in the office. Numbness, tingling in my fingers,” she said.

She utilizes herbal supplements to attempt to forestall them, and – when that doesn’t work – takes medication to dispose of them. In the excellent plan of migraines, Mandy’s one of the fortunate ones.

“Things don’t work for everyone,” says Dr. Glenn Burkett, an Allegheny Health Network headache specialist.

He recommends mitigating meds for his headache patients and sedates called triptans, which are not constantly perfect.

“One of the side effects that we see with the triptans is that they can cause a little bit of vasoconstriction, meaning that the blood vessels can slightly clampdown. In patients who have cardiovascular risk factors, maybe they have heart disease, maybe they’ve had a stroke, the triptans are not a good choice.”

The FDA has now endorsed another migraine drug, called Reyvow.

“Those patients that are maybe cardiovascularly not a great candidate for the triptans, this might be something we try a little sooner,” Dr. Burkett says.

Like triptans, the medication works at serotonin receptors. These are for the most part through your body, which is the reason a few people taking triptans can have consequences for their veins. In any case, Reyvow works at a subset of serotonin receptors — in the cerebrum.

In two preliminaries, over 3,000 grown-ups with a background marked by headaches took Reyvow. In the two investigations, the rates of patients whose torment or other headache side effects showed signs of improvement inside two hours of taking Reyvow were altogether more noteworthy than those given a fake treatment.

Up until this point, the primary reaction is tiredness.

“You really wouldn’t want to be operating any kind of heavy machinery, or go driving after you take that,” Dr. Burkett cautions. He says it’s nice to have another option to offer patients. “There will certainly be a subset of patients who have tried some of the other things and just haven’t found the success that they need.”

In any case, he concedes:

“It won’t necessarily be the first line.”

In any case, he says if Reyvow can cut the seriousness of a patient’s headache side effects down the middle, he’d consider it a triumph.