Effectiveness of Migraine Drug in Weight Loss

Why do migraine patients regularly lose weight? Migraine drugs that calm down overactive nerve cells in the brain can also reduce your appetite.

Highlights:

Most of the treatments for obesity focus on eating habits and physical activity
Now, the role of serotonin present in the brain in reducing your food intake is better understood
Migraine treating drugs that target serotonin can be useful in weight loss

Triptans, a commonly prescribed class of migraine drugs, may also be useful in treating obesity, suggests a new study by scientists at UT Southwestern, US.

In studies on obese mice, a daily dose of triptan led animals to eat less food and lose weight over a month, the team reported in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

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‘Triptans, the drugs used to treat acute migraine can lower body weight and improve glucose metabolism in less than a month.’

“We’ve shown that there is real potential to repurpose these drugs, which are already known to be safe, for appetite suppression and weight loss,” said study leader Chen Liu, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and Neuroscience and an investigator in the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute.

Emerging Role Of Serotonin In Weight Loss

Obesity affects more than 41% of all adults in the U.S. and increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and certain types of cancer. Currently, most treatments for obesity focus on eating habits and physical activity.

But scientists have long known that serotonin, a chemical messenger found throughout the brain and body, plays a key role in appetite. However, there are 15 different serotonin receptors – molecules that sense serotonin and signal for cells to change their behavior in response ().

Researchers have struggled to understand the role of each serotonin receptor in appetite, and previous drugs that targeted certain individual serotonin receptors have been withdrawn from the market due to side effects.

Migraine drug effect for weight loss

Triptans, which are used to treat acute migraines and cluster headaches, work by targeting a different receptor – the serotonin 1B receptor (Htr1b) – that had not previously been well studied in the context of appetite and weight loss.

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For the new study, researchers tested six prescription triptans in obese mice that were fed a high-fat diet for seven weeks. Mice fed two of these drugs ate about the same amount, but mice fed the other four ate less.

After 24 days, mice were given a daily dose of the drug Frovatriptan lost, on average, 3.6% of their body weight, while mice not given a triptan gained an average of 5.1% of their body weight. Researchers saw similar results when they implanted devices into the animals that gave them a steady dose of Frovatriptan for 24 days ().

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They found that these drugs, and one in particular, can lower body weight and improve glucose metabolism in less than a month. Since triptans are generally prescribed for short-term use during migraines, patients would not have noticed the longer-term impacts on appetite and weight in the past.

To determine exactly how Frovatriptan impacts food intake and weight, researchers engineered mice to lack either Htr1b or Htr2c, the serotonin receptor targeted by Fen-phen and Lorcaserin.

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In mice without Htr1b, Frovatriptan no longer could decrease appetite or cause weight loss, while cutting out Htr2c had no effect. This confirmed that the drug worked by targeting the serotonin 1B receptor.

This finding could be important for drug development. Researchers not only shed light on the potential to repurpose existing triptans but also brought attention to Htr1b as a candidate to treat obesity and regulate food intake.

They also went on to show exactly which neurons in the brain were most important for the role of Htr1b in mediating appetite, homing in on a small group of cells within the brain’s hypothalamus.

References:

Emerging Roles for Serotonin in Regulating Metabolism: New Implications for an Ancient Molecule - (https://academic.oup.com/edrv/article/40/4/1092/5406261)
Can weight loss improve migraine headaches in obese women? Rationale and design of the Women's Health and Migraine (WHAM) randomized controlled trial - (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257623447_Can_weight_loss_improve_migraine_headaches_in_obese_women_Rationale_and_design_of_the_Women's_Health_and_Migraine_WHAM_randomized_controlled_trial)