If this is not your name, click here.
| | If this is not your name, click here. | | |
| | Contact Us | Order Now | Journals | Bookstore | Register a colleague | | |
| |  ANA: Interferon Treatment May Stabilize Multiple Sclerosis Progression As Well As Reduce Attacks By Paula Moyer TORONTO, ON -- October 12, 2004 -- Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) may experience slower progression of their disease if they are treated with interferon-beta-1B (Betaseron), according to findings presented here October 5th at the 129th annual meeting of the American Neurological Association. Although clinicians know that patients with MS who are on interferon have fewer MS attacks, they do not know whether treatment forestalls progression. Few investigators, and few patients, are able to undertake the long-term clinical trials that would be necessary in order to answer this question. "Although this study was not placebo controlled, the findings suggest stabilisation of disease course in treated MS patients compared to natural history controls," reported principal investigator Amita V. Shimpi, PhD. The patients in the investigators' retrospective review had fewer relapses and less disability than the investigators found in natural history data. Dr. Shimpi is a post-graduate researcher in neurology at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, Alabama. The investigators recruited 83 patients who had had confirmed relapsing-remitting MS and had been treated for more than 7 years. Treatment starting between December 1993 and December 1996. Of these, 18 (21.7%) switched to a secondary progressive course during an average treatment duration of 8.8 ± 0.9 years. The investigative team used previously published natural history data as the control. When Dr. Shimpi and co-investigators compared the treated patients to the historical controls, they found that 49% of the patients worsened by < 1 Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) step, compared to the 85% that would have been expected from the historical controls (P <.0001). The treated patients had an annual rate of EDSS progression that averaged 0.09 ± 0.19 step compared to historical control rate of 0.5 step (P <.0001). The annual relapse rate of 0.26 ± 0.26 while on therapy was significantly lower than that which had been in these patients two years before they started treatment (1.07 ± 0.82) (P <.0001). In addition to the patients in the chart review, 43 patients started on interferon-beta-1b during the same period, but 22 were lost to follow-up and 21 discontinued treatment for a variety of reasons. The study was supported by an unrestricted educational grant from Berlex, which markets Betaseron in the United States. [Presentation title: Sustained Clinical Effectiveness of Interferon-beta-1B in Multiple Sclerosis Patients. Abstract #266]
|
