#ThinkHand & #SurveyResults: ocrelizumab for PPMS

It is clear how the MS community feels about ocrelizumab for PPMS #ClinicSpeak #ThinkHand

I have previously discussed the concerns many neurologists have about the risk-benefit ratio of ocrelizumab in PPMS. Ocrelizumab is a much more potent B-cell depleter than Rituximab, i.e. ~10x as potent. A 600-mg dose of ocrelizumab is ~6x more potent than 1,000-mg dose of rituximab. This may explain the efficacy difference between the two monoclonals; particularly if ocrelizumab is targeting the hard to get to meningeal and intrathecal B cells. 


After some of the comments on this blog we ran a survey to poll what pwMS thought about the ocrelizumab results. It is pretty clear that for pwMS ocrelizumab represents a real advance and the beginning of something very important for them. We now have something to build on. Let's hope we see a large number of new trials exploring other DMTs in more advanced MS. What was once an intractable problem seems tractable. This has to be good news. 

It is interesting that only a minority of the survey respondents support a PPMSer protest. Why? 


CoI: multiple

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