This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

Scottish MS patients finally given access to oral MS drug Gilenya®



The Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) has today announced that Gilenya® (fingolimod), the world’s first pill for the treatment of highly active relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS), has now been approved for restricted use within NHS Scotland.

Today’s decision means that people with highly active RRMS not responding to treatment with first-line interferon injections now have the option of switching to fingolimod as their next ...

Multiple sclerosis sufferers in Scotland will learn today if the world’s first oral pill to alleviate symptoms of the condition is to be prescribed on the NHS.

The drug, Fingolimod, is already available to MS patients in England and Wales after being approved by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence in March. But the Scottish Medicines Consortium, which evaluates drugs for use in Scotland and ruled earlier this year that it did not provide ...

Has anyone got PML from gilyenia. Ive read of a couple of cases but both cases were where the patients took tysabri first so im wondering if anyone developed PML without having taken tysabri ?

What do you think? Are these high-tech drugs designed to be impossible to stop taking? Do they make the disease worse?

From my rough understanding, Gilenya has an associated increased risk of cancer. Is there any information regarding it and X-Rays? (apart from avoid)

Thinking about it, flying internationally is a big source of X-Rays.

NHS funding for a groundbreaking drug piloted in the North East for patients with multiple sclerosis is now mandatory.

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) has stipulated that adults with relapsing remitting MS not responding to treatment with first-line interferon injections should have access to fingolimod, an oral pill that cuts relapses by more than half compared to a standard injection.

Clinical trials that began in 2004 at the regional centre for the ...

MS drug Gilenya prescriptions slowing due to lack of monitoring facilities




Novartis’ multiple sclerosis (MS) pill Gilenya faces slowing prescriptions in New York because of a lack of facilities to perform first-dose observations, neurologists told Biopharm Insight. However, Novartis has been in contact with a number of clinicians and is working on increasing the number of sites.

A US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) review was initiated after a patient died within 24 hours ...

The multiple sclerosis medication fingolimod (Gilenya) led to "rapid and sustained" reductions in MRI-documented inflammatory lesion activity, researchers reported.

In a two-year randomized trial, the medication also slowed the rate of brain volume loss compared with placebo, according to Ernst-Wilhelm Radue, MD, of University Hospital Basel in Basel, Switzerland, and colleagues.

Changes in lesion volume over time also favoured the medication rather than placebo, Radue and colleagues reported online in Archives of Neurology.

Combined ...

Gilenya® shows long-term efficacy and safety in extension of phase III head-to-head study



New long-term data for Gilenya® (fingolimod), the only oral therapy approved to treat people with relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis (MS), show a sustained efficacy benefit and a consistent safety profile with up to 4.5 years of continuous treatment. These results, from an extension of the phase III head-to-head TRANSFORMS study, also showed improved efficacy for patients switched to Gilenya from ...

As their European counterparts did last month, the FDA has recommended continued use of the Gilenya multiple sclerosis pill sold by Novartis, but did say the drug should carry stronger warnings about heart risks and that some patients should undergo increased monitoring. The move was largely expected after the European Medicines Agency issued a similar alert, despite arguments by a non-profit safety watchdog that further restrictions are needed.

Although cardiovascular risks were known at ...