Early Interferon Use May Slow Onset of MS
Sept. 25 -- One of the drugs used to control multiple sclerosis also sharplyslows the rate at which people develop the crippling nerve disease,according to researchers.
The finding, from an international study halted early becausethe results were so strong, could help thousands of patients whocurrently don’t get treatment until they have substantial brain ornerve damage.
“It’s a very important finding because it really shows if onestarts treatment early on, one can change the fate of a patient,”delaying or even preventing the onset of the disease, said Dr.Thomas Leist, director of the Comprehensive Multiple SclerosisCenter at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.
‘New Perspective’ on Treatment“It opens up a new perspective about treatment of multiplesclerosis,” said Leist, who was not involved in the study, whichwill be published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.
Until now, people who suffer inflammation of nerves in the eye,spinal cord or lower brain — indications that MS might bedeveloping — have not been diagnosed with the autoimmune disorder,let alone treated. The diagnosis only follows a second flare-upelsewhere in the central nervous system.
However, researchers at the State University of New York Schoolof Medicine at Buffalo and about 50 other U.S. and Canadian sitesconcluded that giving patients a drug called interferon beta-1awithin weeks of the first nerve inflammation cut the likelihood ofdeveloping MS symptoms within three years by 44 percent.
Only one-third percent of patients who gave themselves weeklythigh injections of the drug developed MS within three years,compared with half the patients who injected a harmless substance.
Stephen Reingold, vice president for research programs atthe National Multiple Sclerosis Society, said the findings willpush doctors to promptly order magnetic resonance imaging inpatients with an initial nerve flare-up.
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