‘Impressive result’
Commenting on the findings for this article, Richard Lipton, MD, professor of neurology, psychiatry and behavioral sciences and director of the Montefiore Headache Center at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, said that “in this refractory population with multiple treatment failures, this is a very impressive, open-label result.”
“This real-world data suggests that ketamine is an effective option for people with medically intractable chronic migraine,” said Dr. Lipton, who was not part of the study. “In these very difficult to treat patients, 65% of those who started on ketamine persisted. Of those who remained on ketamine, 82% found it very effective.”
“This study makes me more confident that intranasal ketamine is a helpful treatment option, and I plan to use it more often in the future,” he added.
Like Dr. Yuan, Dr. Lipton highlighted the need for “well-designed placebo-controlled trials” and “rigorous comparative effectiveness studies.”
The study was funded by Miles for Migraine. Dr. Yuan has received institutional support for serving as an investigator from Teva and AbbVie, and royalties from Cambridge University Press and MedLink. Dr. Lipton has received compensation for consultation from Alder/Lumbeck, Axsome, Supernus, Theranica, Upsher-Smith, and Satsuma. He has participated in speaker bureaus for Eli Lilly and Amgen/Novartis and has received institutional support for serving as principal investigator from Teva, GammaCore, and Allergan/AbbVie. He has received payments for authorship or royalties from Demos Medical, Cambridge University Press, and MedLink.
A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.