Almotriptan

Almirall's Migraine Drug Almotriptan Launched in UK

LONDON (Reuters Health) Feb 22 - Spanish pharmaceutical firm Almirall Prodesfarmma's migraine drug almotriptan (Almogran) was launched on Wednesday in the UK and Northern Europe, according to the company.

The new triptan, the fifth drug in this class to reach market, has been priced at 3.25 pounds sterling per dose, compared with 4 pounds to 8 pounds per dose for current triptans.

Migraine specialists believe this will offer substantial health service cost savings. "In the UK, in 1999, 7.7 million oral doses of triptans were prescribed at a cost of 42.2 million pounds," said Dr. Giles Elrington, a consultant neurologist at St. Bart's and the London NHS Trust. "The same number of doses of almotriptan would cost 17.2 million pounds, a 40% cost saving."

According to Ann Turner, director of the UK Migraine Action Association, a patient advocacy group, there is substantial scope for expansion in triptan use. "Despite this class of drugs being available for a decade, three out of four migraine patients have never tried a triptan," she said.

Almotriptan was simultaneously introduced in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Iceland, where the drug is marketed by Lundbeck Ltd. In the rest of the world, including the US — where Almogran awaits approval from the US Food and Drug Administration — it will be marketed by Pharmacia & Upjohn.

Almotriptan May Have Fewer Side Effects Than Sumatriptan

WESTPORT, CT (Reuters Health) Dec 07 - Almotriptan has good anti-migraine activity and may be better tolerated than sumatriptan, Spanish researchers report. Almotriptan received US FDA approval in May of this year.

Dr. Jordi Gras of Almirall Prodesfarma, Research Centre in Barcelona and colleagues compared the vascular effects of sumatriptan with that of almotriptan in isolated human blood vessels. "This paper is the first to report in detail the effects of almotriptan, a selective and potent 5-HT1B/1D agonist, in preparations of isolated human blood vessels," they note in the current issue of Cephalalgia, dated October.

Almotriptan showed "selectivity of action" for the migraine-related meningeal arteries, according to the team. Moreover, "almotriptan proved to have a statistically significant, seven-fold greater potency and a greater effectiveness in contracting this vessel in comparison with sumatriptan," they report.

The two triptans had similar effects in non-migraine related cranial and extracranial vessels, the team reports. However, almotriptan had lower vasoconstrictive effects on isolated human coronary vessels, which have "putatively been linked to some adverse events in association with sumatriptan," Dr. Gras and colleagues report.

Based on this study, "one can presume that almotriptan, at the therapeutic oral dose, should be more active than sumatriptan and should possess a profile of adverse events clearly lower than sumatriptan," Dr. Gras noted in comments to Reuters Health.

"This assumption has been reinforced by the results of a triptan meta-analysis recently published [Lancet 2001,358:1668-1675], which confirms the superiority of almotriptan compared to sumatriptan in terms of efficacy [sustained pain-free and consistency] variables as well as tolerability," he added.