b"Medicine & Research Doctors NotesThe MS News column includes analysis from BenThrower, M.D., MS Focus senior medical advisor. He drawsfrom the top news stories of the quarter and explainswhat the news means to you, the person with MS.Christine Willis, MLIS, AHIP, is the Clinical InformationLibrarian at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, EglestonHospital.Study: Results disappointing inin a blinded fashion along with a placebo pill.test of fatigue treatmentsIn the end, none of the therapies was any moreResearchers at Johns Hopkins and UC San eective than a placebo in lessening fatigue.Francisco conducted a trial of three medications Well, thats pretty discouraging, and it seems(amantadine, modanil, and methylphenidate) to contradict what we hear from people with MSwith 141 patients with MS. Patients were in the real world. People with MS do sometimesprescribed one of four medication/placebo report benet with these three therapies. Othercombinations each given in six-week increments uncontrolled and randomized trials have shownwith a two-week break between. The Modied benet. So, while I welcome evidence-basedFatigue Impact Scale was used to measure research into MS management, Im not readyeectiveness. Findings suggest there was no to kick these medications out of the toolboxstatistically or clinically signicant dierence we use to manage MS fatigue.between any of the treatments or the order in Researchers nd natalizumab, which they were taken to say one was more improvements in disability linkeective than the placebo. One outcome thatwas noted in analysis is that there were small Investigators with the Tysabri Observationalimprovements compared to the placebo with Program reviewed patient data gathered duringexcessive daytime sleepiness when patients an eight-year time period in the program.took modanil or methylphenidate but further This study looked at more than 6,000 peopleresearch is needed to better understand this with relapsing-remitting MS to assess conrmeddata. The ndings were published in the journal disability improvements. Findings showedLancet. there is an improvement for 23.9 percent ofDr. Thrower Fatigue is one of the most common those with baseline EDSS scores of greaterand bothersome symptoms people with MS than or equal to 2. Patients who starteddeal with. Lassitude describes non-exertional, natalizumab early after diagnosis had greaternonheat-related fatigue. Despite being such a CDI. One of the conclusions from the studysignicant issue for the MS community,there is that two-thirds of patients had a greateris no FDA-approved therapy to treat fatigue from than 50 percent chance of maintaining CDIMS. Many therapies have been used over the during the eight years of reviewed data. Theyears, including amantadine, modanil, and findings are in line with similar studies;stimulant medications such as methylphenidate. however there may be a limit to this reviewThis study had people try all of these therapies because of the limited lack of randomization59 msfocusmagazine.org"