Contemporary and New Immunomodulatory Therapy for Multiple Sclerosis

This presentation will focus on immunomodulatory drugs that have become available for multiple sclerosis over the past seven years. In addition, promising investigational therapies will be reviewed briefly. The presentation will focus on use of these drugs in patients with relapsing remitting MS, with less emphasis on drugs used in the secondary progressive stage of the disease. In a companion presentation, we will discuss the rationale for early, proactive use of disease monitoring drugs. The emphasis on early proactive therapy results from increasing evidence that the MS disease process is continuously active in many patients from early in the disease, and that the pathologic process in includes irreversible tissue injury and diffuse axonal pathology.