About different treatments for MS

Disease-modulating treatments (DMTs) for MS primarily aim at suppressing inflammatory disease activity in order to reduce the risk of future disease worsening. Today, there is no completely curative treatment, nor are there any reparative treatments that allow existing nerve damage to be healed. However, there are a large number of so-called symptomatic treatments that can reduce various symptoms caused by the MS disease.

Regarding the class of DMTs, patients and doctors may have partly different expectations. At the start of the COMBAT-MS project, we asked patients and neurologists in Sweden and the USA what is the most important aspect of a good treatment.

For people with MS, it was having a good quality of life

For neurologists, it was to prevent development of permanent disability

Both groups also felt that it is important to assess these effects over longer periods of time.

An interesting aspect is that we were later able to document that permanent disability is an important factor for perceived quality of life. This means that both patients and neurologists may still strive for the same goal, just that they name it in different ways.

None of these measures can be reliably assessed in randomized clinical trials over two years. The long-term follow-up carried out through the COMBAT-MS study therefore provides important information about the benefits and risks of different types of treatment.

In addition to regular drug treatments, hematogenous stem cell therapy is also sometimes used. This is sometimes called stem cell transplantation and has proven to be a good treatment option for particularly aggressive disease.