Direct cost and healthcare resource utilization of patients with migraine before treatment initiation with calcitonin gene-related peptide monoclonal antibodies by the number of prior preventive migraine medication classes.

Medications used for the prevention of migraine (PMM) are underused as they might cause adverse effects, intolerance, or may lack efficacy. This leads to the discontinuation of the current treatment and switching to other treatments. Calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are a new class of drugs for the prevention of migraine. Since 2018, four CGRP mAbs have been approved for use in the prevention of migraine. It is known that patients who use more preventive migraine treatments incur greater total direct (caused by a number of medical visits or increased healthcare resource utilization, surgery, drugs, equipment, etc.) annual healthcare costs and healthcare resource utilization (HCRU) in patients with migraine. In the current study, the annual average direct cost and HCRU were compared between patients who had not used preventive medicine and patients who had used 1, 2, or ≥3 preventive medicines for migraine before starting CGRP mAbs. We observed that the healthcare costs and HCRU increased with the use of a higher number of preventive medicines for migraine. Patients who started using injectable CGRP mAbs after at least 3 preventive medicines had the highest healthcare costs and HCRU compared with other groups.