Long-term follow-up of a randomized study of combination interferon and glatiramer acetate in multiple sclerosis: Efficacy and safety results up to 7 years

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Glatiramer Acetate in the context of multiple sclerosis in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 1008 patients were involved.

PubMed indexes the participants as teenagers, young adults, adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

1008 RRMS patients were followed on protocol until the last participant enrolled completed 3 years, allowing some subjects to be followed for up to 7 years.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized and double-blind study.

The patients were allocated by chance, so the Glatiramer Acetate group and the comparison group should start out alike.

As a double-blind Glatiramer Acetate study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

A time span of 7 years appears in the methods.

Secondary outcomes included time to confirmed disability, Multiple Sclerosis Functional Composite (MSFC) score and MRI metrics.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Adjuvants, Immunologic, Glatiramer Acetate, Interferon beta-1a, Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Multiple Sclerosis, Relapsing-Remitting.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Clinical trial, Disease activity free status and RRMS.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and double-blind study of Glatiramer Acetate in 1008 patients in people with multiple sclerosis over 7 years.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Its findings take up roughly 7 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2017 (Multiple sclerosis and related disorders), a journal based in Netherlands.

More context: the Glatiramer Acetate compound page, Multiple sclerosis research.