There are now two basic approaches to treating MS medically.
First there are drugs that aim to suppress, minimize or halt the destructive immune response, that is the inflammation and the accompanying symptoms that occur when MS is in an active phase. In this context the overall aim is to move from controlling one or more relapses, to minimizing and ideally halting further disease progression. Steroid drugs have been used for many years to try and control the inflamma- tion attending relapses and lessen symptoms, but they have little effect on the underlying disease. More recently, drugs based on beta-interferon and others based on glatiramer acetate are showing more promise in not only assisting in the control of relapses, but also appearing to modify the disease course in some people, as their effects seem to continue for several years. There are also as many as 50 promising individual therapies undergoing clinical trials at any one time, although few will end up
being used in clinical practice, and the drugs are often targeted to only very specific types of the disease.
The second approach is to assess and treat the individual symptoms (e.g. spasticity, continence difficulties, pain or fatigue) that result from the damage to the CNS. In this respect there is no single drug treatment
– an ‘MS drug’ – for all the symptoms of MS because of the immense variation and different rates of progression in each individual. Fortunately, MS is a condition where many symptoms can, in most cases, be relatively well managed for long periods of time.