Scientists have weighed in on a recent drug’s promise to treat multiple sclerosis (MS) and located that it may very well be effective in combating the early onset of the autoimmune disorder.

MS is an autoimmune disorder that targets the central nervous system and harms the brain and the spinal cord. It could entail a variety of problems which have different levels of severity. An individual with MS will experience symptoms like numbness or weakness in a number of limbs, gait or mobility issues, double vision, lack of coordination and vertigo, amongst others, as per the Mayo Clinic.

The explanation for the condition is yet to be understood, but a mix of genetic and environmental aspects may very well be behind this.

Experts are of the idea that starting the treatment early, even before the MS symptoms begin to manifest, could diffuse its possibility to cause greater harm. Interestingly, a small phase 3 clinical trial proved the efficacy of a recent drug called teriflunomide in stopping any worsening of the symptoms.

Scientists started off through the use of the drug on patients with lesions that time to radiologically isolated syndrome (RIS) seen in MS patients.

After conducting a cohort study on 89 participants, the team concluded that participants who took the drug had a 72% lower risk of experiencing first symptoms as in comparison with those within the placebo group.

The findings shall be presented next week on the American Academy of Neurology’s seventy fifth annual meeting in Boston.

RIS is the telltale precursor to developing MS. “The goal of treatment within the RIS phase is to maintain a patient within the 50% that does not convert to MS in 10 years, to stop it before the disease becomes symptomatic,” Dr. Orhun Kantarci, a neurologist on the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and a co-author of the study, said.

Though the research remains to be at a really early stage, scientists doubled down on the efficacy of teriflunomide in cutting the danger of neurological damage or other debilitating symptoms of MS given it’s introduced right after doctors speculate the patient could develop MS.

“With increasingly more people having brain scans for various reasons, resembling headache or head trauma, more of those cases are being discovered, and plenty of of those people go on to develop MS,” Dr. Christine Lebrun Frenay of the University Hospital of Nice in France, study creator and American Academy of Neurology fellow, said in a media release.

“The earlier an individual will be treated for MS, the greater the probabilities of delaying damage to the myelin, which decreases the danger of everlasting neurologic impairment and debilitating symptoms,” Frenay added.

MS targets Central Nervous System
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