Todays new offering is Holroyd KB, Healy BC, Conway S, Houtchens M, Bakshi R, Bhattacharyya S, Bose G, Galetta K, Kaplan T, Severson C, Singhal T, Stazzone L, Zurawski J, Polgar-Turcsanyi M, Saxena S, Paul A, Glanz BI, Weiner HL, Chitnis T. Humoral response to COVID-19 vaccination in MS patients on disease modifying therapy: Immune profiles and clinical outcomes. Mult Scler Relat Disord...
#MS COVID-19 Updated effects of disease modifying drugs on COVID-19.
There are now hundreds of papers on COVID-19 and multiple sclerosis and it has become boring for most people, but we need to keep an eye out for what the current information is showing, as it may help you or your neuro choose what you are going to do next. The World of MS got together to share their information because with larger numbers, clarity appeared. Early glimpses was based on about 2,000...
Should your neurologist take the lead?
I get it, it is all about shared decision making when it comes to selecting the right treatment for you in MS. But, this requires both individuals to be on the same page. When you’re dealing with a condition that affects the brain primarily it adds complexity and calls into question the validity of this process. A few months back, an MS patient informed me that I should have just told him...
Plain language Cladribine works for a few years.
Two papers…plain English about two medical papers, So it tells us that for most people you get years of benefit from a story course of cladribine…but what it does say is what to do next Disease stability over five years in people with multiple sclerosis treated with cladribine tablets: a plain language summary. Giovannoni G, Comi G, Rammohan K, Rieckmann P, Dangond F, Jack D...
Mushrooms to cure MS?
Many of todays medicines have their origins in nature and today’s post is about medical mushrooms. Mushrooms or fungi have given us a number of treatments and where would people with transplants be without cyclosporin A, which is an immunosuppressive agent derived from fungi. As any of the long-term readers will know, I introduced the concept of “mushroom food” rather than say...
The imods and COVID-19
Image created with Biorender.com. This looks complicated because it is complicated If you are interested we have written a review about the impact of the imods on COVID and SARS-COV-2 vaccination and anti-viral agents. If you feel up to it and would like a long read over the holiday weekend. It tries to explain the clinical observations on why you have had seemingly rubbish vaccine responses yet...
Follow-On treatments
Brownlee WJ, Wolf C, Hartung HP, Dingermann T, Anshasi N, Clark RA, Trojano M, Selmaj K, Uitdehaag BM, Tur C, Wuerfel J, Dallmann G, Witte J, Sintzel M, Bobrovnikova O, Cohen JA. Use of follow-on disease-modifying treatments for multiple sclerosis: Consensus recommendations. Mult Scler. 2022: 13524585221116269. Background: As patents for multiple sclerosis (MS) therapies expire, follow-on...
COVID vaccinations in anti-CD20 treated individuals
Long time no COVID-19 but I happened to be reading preprint sites and this paper stimulated my interest. It looks at people treated with anti-CD20 antibodies and examines what happens with repeated vaccinations. Sadly the problem of poor response persists in some individuals, but if you have made a response, it boosts with an increasing number of vaccine cycles. The levels may help give you...
Haute CD20 couture: Swedish designer trials!
Many pwMS are currently treated with ocrelizumab (OCR, Ocrevus) which is an antibody targeting a surface protein named ‘CD20’ on B cells leading to longstanding depletion of this cell type. Some of you might wonder why we are not treating pwMS with OCR’s older, cheaper and more experienced brother: rituximab (RTX, Mabthera). RTX also targets ‘CD20’ resulting into profound B cell depletion. It was...
EBV in Germany, is this the answer?
EBV, vitamin D and genetics are probably some of the most commonly reported risk factors for MS. All studies report these in terms of hazard ratios comparing occurrence in the exposed versus non-exposed individuals. Hazard ratio (HR) = (risk of outcome in one group)/ (risk of outcome in another group) An HR of 1 therefore means lack of association, a hazard ratio of greater than 1 suggests an...