A new treatment is bringing hope for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have multiple sclerosis. The FDA has approved a new drug, Ocrevus. Some St. Louis doctors helped in the clinical trials.
“It’s a major breakthrough for the treatment of MS,” said Dr. Barry Singer, with the MS Center for Innovations in Care at the Missouri Baptist Medical Center.
Singer and his colleagues tested Ocrevus, and found the drug slowed the progression of the most common form of MS.
“For primary progressive patients, now we have a new option for you to change the disease course,” Dr. Singer said. “It’s been exciting to see people in the clinical trials and now it will be available to our patients. Even today, we’ve been writing scripts because there’s some patients desperately waiting for this new treatment to become available.”
Coincidentally, the FDA approval came on the same day the Planetarium was lit orange for MS Awareness month.
The Planetarium is orange tonight for #MultipleSclerosis awareness @ksdknews pic.twitter.com/bZG0VO2FLr
— Marianne Martinez (@MarianneKSDK) March 30, 2017
“Most patients now, when they get diagnosed with MS, can have pretty high quality of life,” Dr. Singer said.
There is an MS Awareness walk this weekend in Forest Park. For more info, click here.
For more information on MS, click here.
For more information on the drug Ocrevus, click here.
