Treatment escalation over induction therapy

Dr Emmanuelle Waubant (University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA) discussed why treatment escalation is the preferred principle over induction therapy. With respect to long-term outcomes in MS, there is a lot of heterogeneity. Patients can have different clinical and anatomical relapse locations, as well as different relapse frequency, severity, and recovery. Up to 20% of patients have “benign” disease, defined as having an EDSS ≥2.0 after 10-year duration. Although untreated MS may shorten life span by 6 years on average, many patients on moderately effective disease-modifying treatments (DMTs) have good outcomes in the long term. For example, it was shown that 69.8% of patients with clinically isolated syndrome on IFN-beta had EDSS <3.0 by year 11 [1]. Several clinical and MRI characteristics at onset predict poor outcome in cohorts, but not always in individual patients. Very little is known about the long-term safety and efficacy of or...

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Posted on 8 November, 201922 March, 2021