Effectiveness of multiple disease-modifying therapies in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis: causal inference to emulate a multiarm randomised trial

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Glatiramer Acetate in the context of multiple sclerosis, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Simultaneous comparisons of multiple disease-modifying therapies for relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) over an extended follow-up are lacking.

Who Took Part

PubMed tags the participants as women only.

For each patient, the first eligible intervention was analysed, censoring at change/discontinuation of treatment.

The compared interventions included natalizumab, fingolimod, dimethyl fumarate, teriflunomide, interferon beta, glatiramer acetate and no treatment.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized study.

Because people in this Glatiramer Acetate study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Data from 74 centres in 35 countries were sourced from MSBase.

Marginal structural Cox models (MSMs) were used to estimate the average treatment effects (ATEs) and the average treatment effects among the treated (ATT), rebalancing the compared groups at 6-monthly intervals on age, sex, birth-year, pregnancy status, treatment, relapses, disease duration, disability and disease course.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Multiple Sclerosis, Relapsing-Remitting, Glatiramer Acetate, Fingolimod Hydrochloride, Immunosuppressive Agents, Natalizumab, Multiple Sclerosis and Dimethyl Fumarate.

Author keywords: STATISTICS.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Glatiramer Acetate in people with multiple sclerosis.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 6 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2023 (Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry), a journal based in England.

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