And we’re off… Almost exactly three years after submitting our outline application to the NIHR-EME, the first site initiation visit of ChariotMS will take place TODAY at my home site, The Royal London Hospital. We are expecting the first of 200 people with advanced MS to enrol in June. And as the remainder of 20 sites across all nations of the UK will open over the next three months...
BartsMS #MSCOVID19 #vaccination advice: The update of the update of the…
So, six weeks ago we said this: BartsMS – The latest “final” update on SARSCoV2 vaccinations in the context of disease modification However, in the COVID19 era, the life cycle of evidence emerging, and us reflecting on it, has shrunk. Hence, another update on our vaccine advice was overdue: COVID-vaccines-DMT_BartsMS-guidance_March-update_final There are two changes to the...
Asking to change the rules for cladribine? It’s already happened !
Fair enough, there has been a build up to this. After all, a couple of days ago MD ProfB explained – again – that whilst both cladribine and alemtuzumab are immune reconstitution treatments (IRTs) with significant long term effects on B cell subsets, particularly the memory B cell pool, this is where their similarity largely ends. Next came ProfG detailing 17 attributes of cladribine...
BartsMS – The latest “final” update on SARSCoV2 vaccinations in the context of disease modification
COVID-vaccines-DMT_BartsMS-guidance_20210211 So there it is, our latest “final” advice based on (i) what we believe the evidence tells us and (ii) high-level decisions within our healthcare environment. We’ve also listened to our colleagues, in- and outside of BartsMS, and mind you there are people with strong views… Only joking! The major change has been our Trust’s...
Addressing lack of vaccine confidence in ethnic minorities
Evidence is only a small part of changing practice. A relatively recent reminder of this truism was our effort to convince colleagues across the UK to use ‘atraumatic’ instead of old school ‘cutting’ needles for lumbar punctures (LP) given the former have far fewer adverse effects than the latter, mainly of so-called ‘post-LP headache syndrome’. Although we...
BartsMS COVID-19 vaccine advice – update
The advice I posted on 29 Dec is already outdated. Meantime NHS England decided to introduce the 3 month gap between 1st & 2nd dose of any of the vaccines currently available in the West, and only a couple of days ago did the latest mRNA vaccine (Moderna) receive the green light from the MHRA. We have therefore updated our advice – here it is: COVID-vaccines-DMT-BartsMS...
BartsMS COVID-19 vaccine advice
Following on from ProfG’s vaccine-post yesterday, I’ve now uploaded the vaccine advice BartsMS have produced for pwMS. As always with such documents, it is going to age rather quickly as new evidence emerges. COVID-vaccine-guidance-in-MS_final_1.3 I support ProfG’s view 100% that you should have the vaccine, unless there are specific contra-indications. I also agree that...
MS Society’s press release on ChariotMS
CHARIOT-MS-PR_FINAL_20201116
ChariotMS is on a roll…
I’ve been neglecting my blogging duties, but I have an excuse, which is that I had the team and myself on ‘slogging’ duties to get ChariotMS underway:-) ChariotMS is an ‘investigator-led’ trial, and that really means doing all related jobs yourself, from protocol writing to participant-information & consent sheets, case report forms, database, statistics...
MSVirtual2020: ChariotMS
Whilst COVID-19 continues to be rather all-consuming, we’ve been extremely fortunate signing all relevant contracts at the start of the pandemic enabling us to keep the momentum of ChariotMS. Recruitment was meant to start this month, however COVID-19 threw us a final dummy, and we are now on course to enrol the first participant in Jan 2021. I can hardly describe how excited I am this...