Could Ozempic Help Alleviate Migraines? Preliminary Research Shows Potential for GLP-1s

Got a blinding headache? Some GLP-1 therapy could surprisingly help. A recent clinical trial has found early evidence that these popular drugs, typically used to treat obesity and type 2 diabetes, may also reduce migraine episodes.

Researchers in Italy conducted the small pilot trial, which involved dozens of patients living with obesity and chronic migraine headaches. People experienced a significant drop in the number of migraine days each month upon taking liraglutide, the researchers found—even when they didn’t lose weight on the drug. The results, while preliminary, indicate that GLP-1s could be a valuable add-on treatment for some people with migraines who haven’t responded to other medications, the study authors say.

“Our findings show that liraglutide may be effective in the treatment of unresponsive high-frequency or chronic migraine in patients with obesity,” the researchers, based at the University of Naples Federico II, wrote in their paper, published this month in the journal Headache.

GLP-1s mimic a hormone important to regulating hunger and metabolism. This drug class has been around for two decades, and the latest approved iterations, semaglutide and tirzepatide, are substantially more effective at helping people lose weight and control their blood sugar than diet and exercise alone. Scientists have learned over time that the potential health benefits of GLP-1s may extend beyond weight loss alone, however. Some early studies have suggested GLP-1s can tamp down the drug-related cravings of people with substance use disorders, for instance.

Chronic migraines are a complex condition, with many possible factors behind them. But one such factor is increased intracranial pressure in the head, according to the study researchers. Since past research has shown that GLP-1s can reduce this pressure, they hypothesized this drug class could be a potential migraine treatment.

They tested liraglutide, an older GLP-1 drug, on 31 patients with obesity and unresponsive migraines for 12 weeks. By the study’s end, people’s average monthly days of migraine had dropped from around 20 days to just under 11—a nearly 50% drop. One participant even became completely free of migraines. Some people also experienced modest weight loss, but interestingly enough, their degree of weight loss wasn’t correlated to the improvement in migraines they experienced. In other words, liraglutide’s effect on migraines appeared to be independent of its weight loss effect.

As the researchers fully acknowledge, this was just a proof-of-concept study, not meant to definitively prove anything. And there are important lingering questions left to resolve. Will newer GLP-1 drugs like semaglutide (Ozempic and Wegovy) be more effective at relieving pressure-related migraines as well, for example? But given how difficult migraines can be to remedy, even with recent drug approvals, finding a new and already tested avenue for treatment could be invaluable.

More studies should validate whether intracranial pressure-reducing drugs, GLP-1s included, can be a new target for migraine relief, the researchers say. But it’s a promising start.