Cladribine Phase-II results

[Frank]

The placebo controled phase-II trial treated 52 patients over 18 month.
Effects on relapses were significant, but no difference were seen regarding EDSS progression.

--Frank

http://www.abstracts2view.com/aan2008ch ... 8L_P02.160

[gwa]

Effects on relapses were significant, but no difference were seen regarding EDSS progression.

--Frank

The only way, in my opinion, to tell if a therapy is working is improvement of the EDSS.

There is no reliable way to assess how good the therapy is by giving out malarkey about how many relapses were prevented. It is not possible for anyone to know how many relapses were prevented. It is a guesstimate only and is easily skewed.

gwa

[Loobie]

Boy have I learned that GWA. When you first get MS, you think a relapse is going to be so significant that it will have a clearly definable beginning and end. Mine absolutely do not and I usually don't know I'm having a relapse until close to the end. I blame it on everything else going on; stress, lack of rest, over doing it, etc.. But then looking back I can sometimes say "I had a relapse", but never with 100% certainty. I guess it really has to do with where the damage occurs if it's going to slap you in the face or not. I've racked up enough symptoms now that I've been a 4, and twice a 4.5, and up to the point of getting to those numbers I had not had an "AHAAA!" relapse so I have no idea how they can even be counted to know you're having more or less of them.

I agree with you; progression is all that matters to the patient.

[gwa]

The people that have posted on these forums who claim to have gotten better, ie reversal of symptoms, can be counted on less than 10 fingers. None of these people have taken anything that supposedly causes fewer relapses.

The people who have gotten better have either been given a very potent cancer drug that wiped out their immune system (Ian here) or they have taken antibiotics (Sarah here).

Nothing else in the market now can claim to reverse what seemed to be irreversible symptoms except these two previously described meds. If I were just starting out with this disease, I would try the antibiotics first and if that didn't help, I would go for the Cytoxin or Revimmune if I qualified.

The other recourse is to wait for a few years (yeah, haven't we all heard that before) and take the newer drugs or treatments that may stop disease progression, not just cause fewer relapses.

These are just my opinions.

gwa