This reduction is actually more convincing than the fact that there was a 30 percent reduction in all attacks and 50 percent reduction in severe clinical attacks because it means the drug is working on the underlying, silent indicators of the disease process, Dr. Rice explained in an interview with Doctor s Guide. We re grateful to knock out a third or half of the bad attacks a patients might be expected to experience, but if we can knock out 80 percent of the smoldering lesions of inflammation in MS, it s a tremendous advance. The EDSS measures symptom severity - the higher the number, the worse the patient s condition. A third important finding is that patients who took the drug for four years did not develop neutralizing antibodies, which usually occur in 20-30 percent of all patients who take interferons and which result in a wearing off of the drug s beneficial effect. Nor were there signs of the patients developing brain atrophy or shrinkage, although Dr. Rice attributes this, in part, to the fact that there were fewer brain lesions and fewer acute attacks of the disease.
Higher doses are better and are less likely to be encumbered by neutralizing antibodies.
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