Health

A Promising New Treatment for MS

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

January 31, 2002 / 8:40 AM EST / CBS

Dr. Emily Senay talks about a very promising new development for people suffering from the crippling nerve disease, multiple sclerosis, or MS, which until now, there have been no guidelines for treating individuals who appear at risk of developing MS.

A study published in this week's New England Journal Medicine has strong evidence that one of the drugs used to control multiple sclerosis can sharply slow the rate at which people develop the crippling nerve disease. The finding is from an international study that says thousands of patients could be helped who currently don't get treatment until they have substantial brain or nerve damage.

This multi-center trial followed 383 people who had one symptom of MS but were not yet diagnosed with the disease. The study demonstrated that early treatment with interferon beta-1a (Avonex(R)) reduced the rate of development of MS by over 44% versus treatment with placebo. Patients in the treatment group also had a relative reduction in the number and volume of brain lesions viewed through MRI scans. Results of the study were so positive that the trial was stopped early to offer patients in the placebo group the benefits of treatment.

Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis is a chronic disease of the central nervous system that affects approximately 400,000 Americans and about one million individuals worldwide. Over 200 new cases are diagnosed each week.

Treatment and Diagnosis

Until now, people who suffer inflammation of nerves in the eye, spinal cord or lower brain -- indications that MS might be developing -- have not been diagnosed or treated as having MS. The diagnosis comes after a second flare-up in the central nervous system. Other researchers at the State University of New York School of Medicine at Buffalo have found that giving a drug called interferon beta-one-A within weeks of the first inflammation cuts the likelihood of developing symptoms within three years by 44%.

Interview with Dr. Emily Senay

For the first time researchers have demonstrated that the onset of MS can be delayed by the drug Avonex. The results of the study were so promising that researchers stopped it early to give patients in the placebo group the treatment.

Marion Hedger has MS and participated in the study at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. She hasn't been told officially if she was given Avonex but has no doubt and is very pleased.

"I expected to have more side effects. I expected to be depressed or to have more attacks and I haven't and I mean, I think a lot of people have said to me that they wouldn't know I had MS unless I actually told them," says Hedger.

The treatment consists of injecting the drug Avonex, into the patient's body once a week. It's made by Biogen and costs about ten thousand dollars per year.