New Migraine Prevention Guidelines Highlight CGRP Drugs, Broad Eligibility

New guidelines from the American Academy of Neurology and the American Headache Society, published on August 31, 2026, provide the first major update in 14 years on medications for preventing migraine, highlighting a new class of targeted drugs and clarifying which patients should receive preventive treatment. The recommendations, published in the journals Neurology and Headache, aim to help clinicians navigate a landscape of treatment options that has expanded significantly since the previous guidelines were issued in 2012. A central focus of the update is the category of drugs targeting calcitonin gene-related peptide, or CGRP, a protein implicated in migraine. These newer medications, including injectable antibodies like erenumab and galcanezumab and oral tablets like atogepant, have shown high efficacy and tolerability in clinical studies. The guidelines present evidence-based recommendations for both episodic migraine, defined as fewer than 15 headache days per month, and chronic migraine, which involves 15 or more headache days per month with at least eight having migraine features.