I call myself the human barometer. Don’t laugh. It’s true. I’m sure many of you can relate. You can feel your health change as the weather changes. In recent years, studies have been undertaken to back up the idea that the weather affects your health.

Chapel Hill drug company Pozen's stock is up 40 percent in early trading today on news that the company has sold the U.S. royalty rights to one of its drugs for $75 million.

Pozen announced in a regulatory filing Wednesday that it has an agreement to sell the rights to MT 400, an experimental migraine drug, to CPPIB Credit Investments, a Canadian investment firm.

Pozen previously licensed the U.S. rights to MT 400 to GlaxoSmithKline, which markets a different dose of the drug as Treximet.
 

Chapel Hill drug company Pozen reported a narrower loss in the third quarter thanks to increased revenues from its migraine medicine Treximet.

Pozen reported a loss for the quarter of 7.1. million, or 24 cents per share, compared to $8.6 million, or 29 cents per share, during the same period a year ago.

That equalled the consensus among analysts who cover the company.

Revenue for the third quarter was $4.9 million, compared to $4.3 million during the same period a year ago.

Most of Pozen's revenue comes from its Treximet migraine medicine, which is sold by larger partner GlaxoSmithKline, and its Vimovo arthritis pain reliever, sold by AstraZeneca. Pozen receives royalties from the sales.
 

Pozen, a small Chapel Hill drug company, has a deal with a division of health giant Johnson & Johnson to market its migraine treatment in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

Pozen won U.S. approval to sell the drug with partner GlaxoSmithKline in 2008. The new partnership with Cilag GmbH International is aimed at bringing the drug to Latin American markets.

"This is a first step in bringing this novel migraine product to the millions of migraine patients living outside the United States," said Pozen chief commercial officer Liz Cermak, in a prepared statement.

Women who suffer from migraines during pregnancy are 15 times more likely to have a stroke than women who do not have the condition, researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill report today.

In addition to an increased risk of stroke, pregnant women who have migraines are two times more likely to have heart disease and more than three times more likely to have blood clots and other vascular problems during pregnancy.

The study appears in this months' issue of the British Medical Journal.

"Women with persistent and severe migraine during pregnancy should be aware of their risk factors, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, history of blood clots, heart disease and prior stroke,” Dr. Cheryl Bushnell, a neurologist at Wake Forest Baptist and lead investigator of the study said in a prepared statement. “There also seems to be a relationship between migraines and preeclampsia, one of the most common and dangerous complications of pregnancy.”

The study also found that women who were 35 or older when they delivered were more likely to have migraines during pregnancy.

"While some women experience relief from migraine headaches while pregnant, others have migraines that are more frequent and severe,” Bushnell said. “The reasons these severe migraines are associated with stroke and vascular disease is not clear but it may be that some women do not compensate as well for the increased vascular stresses of pregnancy, such as increased blood volume, stroke volume and heart rate. Regardless of the cause, active migraine during pregnancy should be viewed as a potential marker of vascular disease.”