People who are diagnosed with multiple sclerosis should get treatment as soon as possible, experts are saying, as they call for an end to the UK’s current “wait and see” approach.
For decades, it has been assumed that drug treatment is best postponed until patients really need it, but the results of a 21-year study published in 2012 shocked experts into a rethink. It revealed that in the trials of the original MS drug, beta interferon, those who were put on medication at the beginning were half as likely to have died as those who were originally on placebo and then given the drug three years later, when the trial ended.
They concluded that even when people have mild symptoms and their MS appears to remit as well as relapse, which is the early pattern of the disease, there can be underlying progressive damage to the nervous system, caused by attacks from the patient’s immune system, which drugs may be able to prevent or postpone.
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2...h-to-treatment
For decades, it has been assumed that drug treatment is best postponed until patients really need it, but the results of a 21-year study published in 2012 shocked experts into a rethink. It revealed that in the trials of the original MS drug, beta interferon, those who were put on medication at the beginning were half as likely to have died as those who were originally on placebo and then given the drug three years later, when the trial ended.
They concluded that even when people have mild symptoms and their MS appears to remit as well as relapse, which is the early pattern of the disease, there can be underlying progressive damage to the nervous system, caused by attacks from the patient’s immune system, which drugs may be able to prevent or postpone.
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2...h-to-treatment
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