NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Treatment with immune-modulating drugs can benefit people with multiple sclerosis, or MS, but a study of physicians' prescribing patterns shows that most MS patients do get these medications.
This is particularly true of those being treated by family physicians, according to the study in the online journal Biomed Central--Medicine.
"Family physicians and internists should consult their neurology colleagues as soon as possible, if they are unsure of when and how to start immunomodulatory agents for their MS patients," Dr. Jagannadha R. Avasarala told Reuters Health.
Avasarala, with Kansas State Neurological Consultants, Wichita, and colleagues analyzed data on approximately 6.7 million clinic visits by MS patients between 1998 and 2004. Slightly more than half of the patients were seen by neurologists.
Six immune-modulating agents have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for treating MS. The first was Betaseron in 1993 and the most recent was Tysabri in 2006. Treatment with immunomodulatory agents, say the investigators, is thought to reduce relapses and slow progression of the disease.
However, about 62 percent of patients who saw a neurologist, and 92 percent seen by family practitioners and internists, were not taking immunomodulatory agents.
Co-researcher Dr. Cormac A. O'Donovan, of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winton-Salem, North Carolina, said in a statement that they could not determine why these drugs were not being prescribed.
However, he noted that the higher prescribing rate by neurologists "probably reflects greater awareness of the drugs' availability and their use by specialists who more often treat patients with MS."
SOURCE: Biomed Central Medicine, online April 2007.
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