Multiple Sclerosis

Last month, a retrospective observational study was published in PLOS One that investigated the safety and efficacy of rituximab in patients with progressive MS (PMS) and relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) in a single tertiary care center in Switzerland.

Long-term treatment of patients with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (SPMS) with siponimod may reduce the risk of disability progression, according to findings of the phase 3 EXPAND study.

Ocrelizumab (Ocrevus) has been FDA approved for the treatment of primary progressive multiple sclerosis, and recent clinical trials with the anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody have revealed significant decreases in disease activity and disability progression in relapsing multiple sclerosis.

In a recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, researchers found that fingolimod (sold as Gilenya), an FDA-approved orally administered drug to treat multiple sclerosis, could reduce painful side effects of multiple myeloma treatments.

Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have defined a new pathway that may help guide therapies for multiple sclerosis and other neurologic diseases.

There's the potential for new nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and multiple sclerosis drugs to be approved in 2019, said Aimee Tharaldson, PharmD, a senior clinical consultant in Emerging Therapeutics for Express Scripts.

Our knowledge of the human microbiome has only been developed over the past decade, according to Elaine Hsaio, PhD, assistant professor of integrative biology and physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, at the 73rd Annual Scientific Convention of the Society of Biological Psychiatry meeting in New York City, May 10 to 12. Hsaio presented about how the microbiome influences brain function, development and behavior.

Vivor helps patients receive financial assistance by focusing on empowering the providers and making it easier for financial navigators to do their job, said Ian Manners, founder and CEO of Vivor.

At the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy's Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy Annual Meeting, held April 23-26, in Boston, Massachusetts, an overflow capacity crowd gathered for one of the meeting’s yearly highlights­: Specialty Pharmaceuticals in Development. Aimee Tharaldson, PharmD, a senior clinical consultant in Emerging Therapeutics for Express Scripts, talked about the key trends in the specialty drug market, including cancer drugs, new competition, and orphan drugs.

Results of a double-blind, randomized, phase 3 trial, published last week in The Lancet, show that siponimod—a selective sphingosine 1-phosphate receptor modulator—slowed the progression of disability in secondary progressive multiple sclerosis.

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Patient preferences for multiple sclerosis therapies are important to take into account and are increasingly so as alternatives to traditional injection therapies are developed to address adherence issues.

Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) can demonstrate the effects of a disease or treatment. By using patient questionnaires, the results can be analyzed to predict clinical outcomes in medical research for diseases, including multiple sclerosis (MS).

A phase 3 clinical trial of patients with relapsing multiple sclerosis and primary progressive multiple sclerosis found that Ocrevus (ocrelizumab) significantly reduced disease progression, according to results released by Genentech.

The first drug to treat primary progressive multiple sclerosis and a new drug approved for atopic dermatitis are the 2017 approvals most exciting to Aimee Tharaldson, PharmD, of Express Scripts.

Population-level judgements on the value of therapies to treat multiple sclerosis don’t adequately depict the differences between how providers and payers view value compared with patients and how patients view value different from one another.

A new treatment option using stem cell transplants was shown to induce sustained remission of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS). More than two-thirds of participants had no signs of progression of disability, relapse of MS symptoms, or new brain lesions after 5 years.

A review of 15 disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) for the treatment of relapsing-remitting and primary-progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) has found that prices for most of these drugs are not well-aligned with added value for patients.

David Hafler, MD, chairman of the Department of Neurology at the Yale School of Medicine, spoke of exciting times in the field of genome-wide association study-specifically speaking to neurology, genetics, the environment, and the autoimmune response.

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Availability of multiple sclerosis (MS) therapies provides substantial value to the currently healthy (who may contract MS in the future), particularly when treatment is fully covered by insurance.

Medicare beneficiaries still face huge out-of-pocket expenses because of uncapped cost sharing in the catastrophic coverage phase. This is especially true for beneficiaries who take specialty drugs.