b"Medicine & ResearchDoctors NotesThe MS News column includes analysis from Ben Thrower, M.D., MS Focus senior medical advisor. He draws from the top news stories of the quarter and explains what the news means to you, the person with MS. Christine Willis, MLIS, AHIP, is the Clinical Information Librarian at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Egleston Hospital.Stem cell treatment better atwecategorizeMSandarenowdividing slowing disability progressionsecondary progressive MS into active and Researchers from around Italy reviewed datainactive. Active SPMS means the individual from the Italian Bone Marrow Transplantationis still having an occasional relapse or new Study Group and the Italian Multiple Sclerosislesion on MRI in addition to progression of Register to determine whether autologousdisability. This Italian study compared the hematopoietic stem cell transplants would sloweffects of traditional MS disease-modifying disability in active secondary progressive multipletherapies to HSCT on progression of disability sclerosis. Seventy-nine AHSCT-treated patientsin those with active SPMS. Not only was HSCT and 1975 patients treated with other disease- more effective at slowing disability progression, modifyingtreatmentswerecomparedformore than one-third of those getting HSCT saw disability outcomes. Patients who underwenta sustained improvement in their disability. I AHSCT were more likely to experience awould predict that HSCT will become a more sustained disability improvement: 34.7 percentcommon part of our management of MS as it of patients maintained an improvement (abecomes more widely available. lower EDSS than baseline) three years afterStudy: Biosimilar as good as Tysabri transplant versus 4.6 percent of patients treatedAntelope was a phase 3, multicenter, by other DMTs. Those who received a transplantdouble-blind, active-controlled, randomized, (61.7 percent) did not exhibit disabilityparallel-group trial conducted at 48 centers progression at the ve-year mark, howeveracross Belarus, Croatia, Georgia, Moldova, those who were on other DMTs showed higherPoland, Serbia, and Ukraine. The researchers disability progression over 10 years. The researchsought to evaluate matching efficacy, safety, was published in the journal Neurology.andimmunogenicitybetweenbiosimilar Thrower -Autologous hematopoietic stem cellnatalizumab and reference natalizumab (brand transplantation represents an aggressive andname Tysabri) in patients with relapsing-potentiallyeffectivewayofrebootinganremitting MS. A total of 264 participants with overactiveimmunesystem.Priorstudiesa mean age of 37 and 61 percent female have shown that the ideal HSCT candidate isreceived treatment with biosim-NTZ or ref-NTZ. under50 and has a signicant inammatoryAt week 24, the model-based mean difference component to their MS. This would mean thein cumulative number of new active lesions presence of enhancing lesions on MRI and/orbetween biosim-NTZ and ref-NTZ treatment ongoing relapses. groups was 0.17. No significant differences between treatment groups were observed across In recent years, we have changed the waysecondary efficacy end points, safety, tolerability, msfocusmagazine.org 44"