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American Morning

New Treatment for Migraines?

Aired September 23, 2002 - 08:39   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Medical news this morning. Two interesting topics, in fact. Migraine sufferers may have a new treatment to ease their pain. An epilepsy drug can help patients who do not respond to traditional medications, this according to new research published today. That is part of our "House Call" this morning.
Also, new guidelines on smallpox vaccines. Dr. Sanjay Gupta with us from the CNN Center -- good to see you, doctor. Good morning to you.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bill.

HEMMER: First the smallpox, what do we need to know?

GUPTA: Well, I'll tell you. First of all, no one has made any decisions yet still about whether or not vaccinations will be recommended for the whole country.

What we're hearing now is that federal health officials have put out a manual, a planning manual, if you will, sort of for everything that should occur if a smallpox outbreak were to occur.

An outbreak, incidentally, Bill, is defined as even a single case of smallpox that would unexpected, that would be considered an act of terrorism. And now, officials at the CDC and at the highest levels of the federal government have come up with a manual, basically, to handle everything from parking at the specific centers, to translators, to actually getting people mass vaccinated.

If a single case were noted somewhere, the assumption might be that cases might show up all over the country. So places would actually get the vaccinations within 12 hours, we're hearing, if that outbreak were to occur. No plans have been made -- actually, I say again, Bill, about mass vaccinating the whole country, a decision about that -- a decision about that potentially thornier issue will be made later this month.

Just to sort of state again, Bill, the big concern over smallpox vaccinations is that while it will protect against smallpox, at least that is what the assumption is, it is potentially a harmful, if not lethal vaccine. It's expected one in 2 million or so people might actually die from this vaccine, and to extrapolate that to the whole country, that would be about 1,000 deaths, potentially, if the entire country were vaccinated.

So, lots of issues to consider. What we are hearing about now, though, is a manual to try and get the country ready should we see even a single case.

HEMMER: Let's talk about migraines now on a Monday morning, a lot of folks probably can relate to this. What is the new treatment?

GUPTA: Well, migraines is a huge problem, Bill, no question about it. Billions of dollars spent on migraine treatments. Think about it like this. There are two ways to really treat migraines. You can actually treat a migraine headache after the symptoms occur. Typical pain medications do that, Tylenol, Ibuprofen, aspirin, and some other medications like triptans, which actually stop the migraine as well.

But if you have migraines that recur, and they say that more than a few times a month, then sometimes those medications that you take to treat migraines will lose their effectiveness.

So the plan of attack changes. Now, you want to instead focus on prophylaxic medications, which -- there are several of them, and now a new one as well called Topiramate, and this is a new -- new anti- epileptic drug, as you said, Bill. These medications are found to have some significant benefit against migraines.

Specifically, a study was done on this particular one, and they found 50 milligrams of the stuff stops migraines 36 percent of the time.

If you up the dosage to 100 to 200 milligrams, it stops migraines about 50 percent of the time. So a potentially effective medication, especially if you've sort of exhausted all of your other migraine treatment possibilities.

And Bill, let me just tell you as well -- what causes migraines is still a bit of a puzzle. People believe -- and I think we have an animation to show this -- people believe that the blood vessels in the brain actually will dilate, and that sets off a pain center response or vice versa, the pain center response causes a dilation of blood vessels.

But either way, when that occurs, that can cause a sort of throbbing headache, usually on one side of the head versus the other, and these medications actually stabilize those blood vessels and stabilize those pain centers, and that is why the anti-epileptic drug seemed to work.

But, just another potential weapon in the armitarium (ph) against migraines.

HEMMER: Good to know. Good to know. Thank you, doctor.

GUPTA: Good to see you, Bill.

HEMMER: Dr. Sanjay Gupta in Atlanta. See you in New York tomorrow, OK, pal?

GUPTA: Yes.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired September 23, 2002 - 08:39   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Medical news this morning. Two interesting topics, in fact. Migraine sufferers may have a new treatment to ease their pain. An epilepsy drug can help patients who do not respond to traditional medications, this according to new research published today. That is part of our "House Call" this morning.
Also, new guidelines on smallpox vaccines. Dr. Sanjay Gupta with us from the CNN Center -- good to see you, doctor. Good morning to you.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bill.

HEMMER: First the smallpox, what do we need to know?

GUPTA: Well, I'll tell you. First of all, no one has made any decisions yet still about whether or not vaccinations will be recommended for the whole country.

What we're hearing now is that federal health officials have put out a manual, a planning manual, if you will, sort of for everything that should occur if a smallpox outbreak were to occur.

An outbreak, incidentally, Bill, is defined as even a single case of smallpox that would unexpected, that would be considered an act of terrorism. And now, officials at the CDC and at the highest levels of the federal government have come up with a manual, basically, to handle everything from parking at the specific centers, to translators, to actually getting people mass vaccinated.

If a single case were noted somewhere, the assumption might be that cases might show up all over the country. So places would actually get the vaccinations within 12 hours, we're hearing, if that outbreak were to occur. No plans have been made -- actually, I say again, Bill, about mass vaccinating the whole country, a decision about that -- a decision about that potentially thornier issue will be made later this month.

Just to sort of state again, Bill, the big concern over smallpox vaccinations is that while it will protect against smallpox, at least that is what the assumption is, it is potentially a harmful, if not lethal vaccine. It's expected one in 2 million or so people might actually die from this vaccine, and to extrapolate that to the whole country, that would be about 1,000 deaths, potentially, if the entire country were vaccinated.

So, lots of issues to consider. What we are hearing about now, though, is a manual to try and get the country ready should we see even a single case.

HEMMER: Let's talk about migraines now on a Monday morning, a lot of folks probably can relate to this. What is the new treatment?

GUPTA: Well, migraines is a huge problem, Bill, no question about it. Billions of dollars spent on migraine treatments. Think about it like this. There are two ways to really treat migraines. You can actually treat a migraine headache after the symptoms occur. Typical pain medications do that, Tylenol, Ibuprofen, aspirin, and some other medications like triptans, which actually stop the migraine as well.

But if you have migraines that recur, and they say that more than a few times a month, then sometimes those medications that you take to treat migraines will lose their effectiveness.

So the plan of attack changes. Now, you want to instead focus on prophylaxic medications, which -- there are several of them, and now a new one as well called Topiramate, and this is a new -- new anti- epileptic drug, as you said, Bill. These medications are found to have some significant benefit against migraines.

Specifically, a study was done on this particular one, and they found 50 milligrams of the stuff stops migraines 36 percent of the time.

If you up the dosage to 100 to 200 milligrams, it stops migraines about 50 percent of the time. So a potentially effective medication, especially if you've sort of exhausted all of your other migraine treatment possibilities.

And Bill, let me just tell you as well -- what causes migraines is still a bit of a puzzle. People believe -- and I think we have an animation to show this -- people believe that the blood vessels in the brain actually will dilate, and that sets off a pain center response or vice versa, the pain center response causes a dilation of blood vessels.

But either way, when that occurs, that can cause a sort of throbbing headache, usually on one side of the head versus the other, and these medications actually stabilize those blood vessels and stabilize those pain centers, and that is why the anti-epileptic drug seemed to work.

But, just another potential weapon in the armitarium (ph) against migraines.

HEMMER: Good to know. Good to know. Thank you, doctor.

GUPTA: Good to see you, Bill.

HEMMER: Dr. Sanjay Gupta in Atlanta. See you in New York tomorrow, OK, pal?

GUPTA: Yes.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com