New safety report on MS medications

[Marco]

AdverseEvents, https://www.adverseevents.com, just released a comparative safety report on Multiple Sclerosis medications. The drugs included in this report included: Avonex, Rebif, Betaseron, Extavia, Copaxone, Tecfidera, Aubagio and Tysabri. The data sets used for this report was obtained from the United States Food & Drug Administration Adverse Reporting System (FAERS) database. The FAERS is a centralized database that is used for post-marketing drug safety reporting.

In general, newer medications had superior safety profiles when compared to older medications. Tecfidera had the best safety profile with the lowest percentage of cases in the four reported categories: “Life-threatening,” “Hospitalization,” “Disability,” and “Death. The report did verify that Tecfidera patients have significant flushing and gastrointestinal issues. It is worth nothing that newer drugs have a shorter history of use and the results may not include problems associated with long-term use.

Particular medications had increased numbers of specific side effects. Gilenya had the worst score for vision disorders, cardiac signs and symptoms, and skin cancers. Aubagio had the highest number of reports for diarrhea. Copaxone had the lowest number of reports for fatigue with Tysabri having the highest. Obviously injection site reactions were not a problem for the oral medications.

The report listed all the drugs from worst to best: Rebif (55), Avonex (54), Betaseron (53), Copaxone (46), Extavia (45), Tysabri (43), Aubagio (39), Gilenya (39), Tecfidera (33). The number is parenthesis represents the score AdverseEvents' proprietary algorithm calculated.


The full report can be obtained here:
http://info.adverseevents.com/specia...ple-sclerosis?


**** Please remember these numbers do not imply that you would do better or worse on any medication. You may individually respond to and tolerate any medication the best. Medication decisions should be made in conjunction with your neurologist. This is not medical advice. ****

[JerryD]

Thanks, Marco. This is a discussion that I wish I had with my neurologist. I am sure this is true for a lot of us, MSer's. It is difficult for me to believe the propaganda that is distributed by the drug companies' marketing machines.

[Diamond57]

Rebif

Now I'm really worried.

[MarkLavelle]

The data sets used for this report was obtained from the United States Food & Drug Administration Adverse Reporting System (FAERS) database. The FAERS is a centralized database that is used for post-marketing drug safety reporting.

In general, newer medications had superior safety profiles when compared to older medications.

Is that because the older meds have simply had more time to accumulate reports, or is this weighted to compensate for that (and if so, how?)? Is there any weighting of symptoms (e.g., lipoatrophy vs. death)?

[Marco]

Diamond - the information has zero bearing on how you will respond to the medication. Rebif is one of the highest interferon doses and many thousands of people are using it successfully.

Mark - I read the methods used a number of times and was more confused each time I read it. They did attempt to normalize the data using some proprietary formulas, but I am believe the newer medications had a mathematical advantage. Long-term side effects for newer medications simply do not exist in the database. That could explain why Extavia performed better than Betaseron. The head-to-head comparisons may not be without bias, but looking at the side effects of each drug individually is still interesting. This is exactly the type of post-marketing information I hope other countries release about Lemtrada.