Task: Explanation
Input (English): Paragraph: Multiple sclerosis is a chronic illness requiring ongoing treatment. So, cost of treatment is an important consideration. This story did not include cost information,in part because the drug in question is not on the market. Acccording to this Bloomberg story, it costs $4,000 a month, and searches on Drugstore.com and other sites back this up. Tip:  we’ve added a new resource for journalists to help them track down costs of medical interventions. Claim: New Pill for MS Shows Promise in Clinical Trial
Output (English): Readers are well served by information on the study’s design, the preliminary nature of the research, the industry-funding behind the work and the strength of the study’s findings. The story also took the additional step of making it clear to readers in multiple ways what type of work is left to be done before this drug becomes a strong clinical option. We wish the story had at least offered some cost information on the experimental drug’s sole competitor, that it had provided more numbers to quantify both benefits and risks, and that it had told readers that some of the information in the story came directly from a news release. Relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis is one form of the disease. It is characterized by a waxing and waning of symptoms with no disease progression. Treatment has been aimed at the immune system and has included injectable drugs (interferons, glatiramer and natalizumab) as well as a newly introduced oral drug, fingolimod. None of the existing treatments are ideal and all bring a host of side effects into play. An additional oral medication as a treatment option could increase medication compliance with some patients and could prove to be the right therapy for people with specific profiles. As this story also notes, though, promising results in clinical trials are still a good distance away from an actual clinical application. We appreciate the notes of caution throughout this piece, and we wish more stories took this approach.