Medication Helps Multiple Sclerosis Patients
Maintain Mobility,
Study Shows
HOUSTON – (June 6, 2006)–Daily injections of glatiramer acetate appear to slow the progression of multiple sclerosis in patients who continue this therapy over a long period of time.
In a landmark study published in the June issue of Multiple Sclerosis, researchers found that nine out of 10 patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis who remained on the Copaxone therapy for 10 years or longer were still walking without assistance.
Jerry S. Wolinsky, M.D., lead researcher and interim dean of The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, said these patients also suffered fewer relapses. Prior to the study, which began in 1991, patients had an average of 1.18 multiple sclerosis attacks per year. During the 10-year study, there was an 80 percent reduction in the number of attacks.
“Now, on average, they may have one attack every five years. People actually forget they have the disease,” said Wolinsky, holder of the Bartels Family and Opal C. Rankin Professorships in Neurology. “They don’t remember what the attacks feel like, and when they do have an attack, the symptoms often are not as severe.”
Wolinsky, who directs the Multiple Sclerosis Research Group and Magnetic Resonance Imaging Analysis Center at the UT Medical School, said patients who remained on continuous therapy did extraordinarily well.
Multiple sclerosis, which affects approximately 400,000 Americans, is a chronic, neurological disease that attacks the central nervous system. Left untreated, patients may develop complications, including episodes of numbness and tingling and the loss of mobility.
“Those on continuous therapy are only slightly worse today than they were 10 to 15 years ago, which is remarkable,” Wolinsky said. They can walk without assistance and are less likely to require hospitalization. More than a decade after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, some of Wolinsky’s patients in the multi-center study are still dancing and taking on physically-demanding jobs.
“I think we really made a difference,” Wolinsky said. “Without treatment, because of the natural course of the disease, you would expect many of those patients to require assistance when walking.”
The study represents the only prospective, open-label follow-up of more than 10 years’ duration designed to evaluate continuous immunomodulatory therapy in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis patients.
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