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Multiple sclerosis – a review

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/ful ... /ene.13819

There has been a reduction in the proportion of people with PPMS. This is probably related to the fact that there are no licensed treatments for PPMS; patients may be labelled as having relapsing MS in order to receive treatment, raising ethical questions about the division of MS into distinct subtypes. This artificial division of MS into different diseases was driven by the pharmaceutical industry to get interferon beta licensed under the Orphan Drug Act in the USA.

Here there is a longer explanation:

https://multiple-sclerosis-research.org ... -kool-aid/

The construct that MS has distinct phases, an early inflammatory and a delayed degenerative phase, is artificial and comes from the Pharma industry’s need to get interferon-beta licensed under the orphan drug act, i.e. MS had to have a prevalence of fewer than 200,000 affected people for the orphan drug act to apply. The only way to get the numbers down to less than 200,000 was to salami-slice up MS into three diseases, i.e. RRMS, SPMS and PPMS.

Hi Frodo

Strange to see this today as I was reading a blog over the weekend that is run by a UK neurologist. It makes for depressing reading but I gathered that RR types may be progressive. This makes sense but I question whether progressive types may also have a degree of active MS because they are then eligible for meds that are now reportedly helpful.

In the UK there is a lack of funds in the NHS so this division reduces the population that might benefit from licensed meds.

Yes. It seems that there is a growing tendency against the classic subdivision in types. Besides, it has changed several times and things like "progressive relapsing" appear and dissapear according to the revision used for the "types".

Just today I have found a new paper somehow against the concept of types:

Delayed diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in males: may account for and dispel common understandings of different MS ‘types’

https://bjgp.org/content/69/680/148.short

My initial PPMS diagnosis was just exactly that. Slow steady decline with no remittances. I think different immune systems just fight MS differently but the disease is all the same one. Compassionate Drs knew that there was no medically proven treatment for PPMS so hesitated to label a patient unless it was perfectly clear. Maybe now all that will change. I wish years ago I could have tried something to knock this disease off it’s coarse. I think there’s definitely more hope for newly diagnosed now for sure so maybe we are gaining.

The subdivision of MS sufferers into 'types' has allowed neurologists to prevent insurability of MS patients, denying them use of existing insurance agreements to pay for conventional medical therapy. My wife and I both begged them. They all said no. This should be the subject of a MASSIVE class action against neurologists.