Original articleInterferon β-1a for optic neuritis patients at high risk for multiple sclerosis☆
Section snippets
Methods
The study was conducted at 50 clinical centers in the US and Canada. The protocol and informed consent forms were approved by each site’s institutional review board, and all study patients gave written informed consent. Study oversight was provided by an independent data and safety monitoring committee. The protocol, which is summarized below, was previously reported in detail.21
Results
Between April 1996 and April 1998, 192 patients with optic neuritis were enrolled in the trial, with 95 assigned to the interferon β-1a group and 97 assigned to the placebo group (Table 1). The mean age of the patients was 34 years; 80% were women and 85% were white. The 2 treatment groups were well balanced on demographic factors. However, the baseline brain MRI T2 lesion volume and the proportion of patients with Gd-enhanced lesions were higher in the interferon β-1a group than in the placebo
Discussion
Our results show that interferon β-1a treatment, initiated at the time of a first episode of optic neuritis, is beneficial for patients at high risk for MS based on brain MRI evidence of subclinical demyelination. In this study of 192 patients with acute optic neuritis, interferon β-1a reduced both the development of clinically definite MS and the development of new brain MRI lesions. These results for the optic neuritis cohort in CHAMPS are similar to the overall study results, which also
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2021, Multiple Sclerosis and Related DisordersCitation Excerpt :It is needless to emphasize that the ability to predict the conversion to MS in each case not only helps to individualize the patient's management but also is an invaluable tool to design studies that are focusing on the prevention of MS after ON attack. The presence of a specific type of plaque in patients with ON was sufficient enough to prescribe interferon β-1a and Glatiramer acetate in multiple studies.9, 10, 17 It might be possible to narrow the drug candidates list based on the probability of conversion to MS in the future studies to select the patients who benefit the most from these types of preemptive interventions.
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This study was supported by Biogen, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts.