Multiple sclerosis affects 1.1 million people world-wide. For about 85% of sufferers the disease begins in a form that comes and goes - so-called ?relapsing/remitting? MS (RR-MS). In about 50% of those cases - about 40% of all MS patients - the disease then progresses to the more serious ?secondary progressive? MS (SP-MS). Unfortunately very little is known about either condition, or how to treat them. But now, for the first time ever, the results of a phase-three clinical trial confirming that a drug, interferon beta (already licensed in most parts of the world for treatment of RR-MS), delays permanent neurological degeneration in SP-MS, have been published.
Ludwig Kappos of University Hospital Basel, Switzerland, and colleagues announce in The Lancet that interferon beta 1b is the first treatment to have a therapeutic effect on SP-MS. In a three-year, double-blind, multi0centre trial they found that, despite inducing side effects including flu-like symptoms, muscular soreness and irritations at injection sites, the drug delayed deterioration of the SP-MS by up to a year. It also attenuated the severity of relapses by about 30%, and reduced new brain lesions by more than 65%.
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