Time is brain. Do you agree or not? #MSBlog #MSResearch
"As usual I discussed how bad MS can be at a personal level (unemployment, divorce, suicide, depression, quality of life, mortality, cognitive impairment, dementia, etc.) and at a socio-economic level for society (costs. loss of productivity, etc). This negative aspects of MS has to be stressed whenever there is a discussion about personal choice and risks vs. benefits of treatment."
"The study below is an interesting one; it shows that despite interferon-beta only being a moderately effective DMT it does improve the quality of life of MSers. I suspect this is because practice has changed since the interferons were first launched and that we now migrate treatment failures off interferons onto other agents. Therefore clinical practice now enriches for responders to interferon-beta. It is a pity we can't predict who is going to turn out to be a responder. We would not have to take a chance of waiting to see who does well on treatment or not. The waiting game can take anything up to 2 years and possibly more. Two years with a shredder in your head is not trivial. We now know that time lost waiting for an effective therapy is time lost; in short time is brain. Not everyone agrees with me when I say this."
Patti et al. Interferon-beta-1a treatment has a positive effect on quality of life of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis: Results from a longitudinal study. J Neurol Sci. 2013 Dec 26. pii: S0022-510X(13)03077-3.
PURPOSE: The impact of interferon beta (IFNβ) therapy on a patient's quality of life (QoL) has not been completely clarified. This multicenter, independent, observational and longitudinal study was aimed to evaluate the impact of different pharmaceutical formulations of IFNβ-1a on QoL in MSers affected by relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS).
METHODS: The multiple sclerosis quality of life-54 questionnaire was used to assess patients' QoL.
RESULTS: 394 (66%) MSers completed the two-year study; 152 were treated with IFNβ-1a i.m. weekly injected (group a), 152 with IFNβ-1a 44μg s.c. injected three times a week (group b) and 90 were untreated (group c). After two years, a significant increase was found in the physical health composite score (Δ=+3.1 in group a, Δ=+3 in group b, p<0.05 in both), mental health composite score (Δ=+4.7 in group a, Δ=+5.5 in group b, p<0.001 in both), in eight MSQoL sub-items of group a and in seven sub-items in group b. Conversely, the untreated group showed a slight decrease in seven domains. The variable "therapy with DMDs" was associated with improved QoL.
CONCLUSION: QoL of RRMS could be improved by IFNβ-1a treatment, despite natural history data which seem to demonstrate that QoL could get worse over the time.