How much could TYSABRI help me?
TYSABRI may offer you the strength to reach your high hopes. Not all
multiple sclerosis (MS) treatments have been proven to do the same things.
TYSABRI is approved to slow the worsening of disability and decrease the number
of flare-ups.
TYSABRI has also been proven to positively affect MRI brain lesions .* But you
should know that everyone may not get the same benefits from treatment with
TYSABRI.
Fewer
flare-ups
Slowed
disease progression
Fewer new
lesions
Fewer flare-ups
Whether you call them flare-ups, relapses, or exacerbations, TYSABRI can
help reduce how often they happen.
At the end of a 2-year study, TYSABRI reduced how often flare-ups occurred by
67% compared with placebo. The average number of flare-ups a patient had each
year was 0.22 for TYSABRI and 0.67 for placebo.
Based on the results of a 2-year study, patients taking TYSABRI may be able
to enjoy up to 4.5 years without a relapse compared with only 18 months for
patients taking placebo.
Most patients taking TYSABRI in the study had no flare-ups at
all.
Of patients who took TYSABRI in the 2-year study, more than 7 out of 10
had no flare-ups at all.
- 72% of TYSABRI patients had no flare-ups at the end of the 2-year study
compared with 46% of placebo patients
Slowed disease progression
Slowing down MS is one of the things that keeps it from standing in your
way.
At the end of a 2-year study, TYSABRI slowed the worsening of disability that
is common in patients with MS. TYSABRI reduced the chance a person’s disability
would worsen by 42% compared with placebo.
- 17% of people taking TYSABRI had their disease worsen, while 29% of people
taking a placebo had their disease worsen
What does this mean to you?
Of patients who took TYSABRI in the 2-year study:
- 83% of TYSABRI patients had no disease progression at the end of the 2-year
study compared with 71% of placebo patients
To figure out if disease is progressing in studies like this one, doctors use a
scale called the EDSS scale. The EDSS scale is a way of measuring physical
disability.
One of the most important points on the scale is at 4.0. That’s when
disability starts to affect more than one thing you do (like your ability to
walk AND sense touch, or your ability to see AND physical coordination). So,
one of the other things the TYSABRI study measured was how much TYSABRI would
reduce the chance patients would reach 4.0 or higher.
At the end of the 2-year study, TYSABRI reduced the chance patients would
progress to an EDSS score of 4.0 or higher by 67% compared with placebo (5% for
TYSABRI vs. 13% for placebo). That means patients taking placebo were
more than twice as likely to reach a score of 4.0 than patients taking
TYSABRI.
TYSABRI reduced the chance patients’ disability would worsen.
Fewer new lesions
TYSABRI can also reduce the number of brain lesions you have. Brain lesions
seen on an MRI show areas of badly damaged nerves.*
At the end of the same 2-year study mentioned before, TYSABRI reduced the
number of lesions that show new disease activity by 92% compared with placebo
(0.1 for TYSABRI vs. 1.2 for placebo).
Here is an example that may help explain what this means for you. It
shows that patients taking TYSABRI may expect to have fewer new active lesions
than patients taking placebo†:
*It is not known exactly how well MRI findings relate to how your MS is
progressing.
† This chart is only an example, not the results from a real MS patient.
