When I state that the real MS is smouldering MS and that relapses and focal MRI activity are not the disease I really mean it.
PwMS who are NEDA-2, without relapses and with no new MRI lesions, but getting worse must have something going on in their brains and spinal cords. This is why we need to go beyond NEIDA (no evidence of inflammatory disease activity) as a treatment target in MS and focus on protecting the end-organ so that pwMS can have enough reserve to cope with normal ageing when they get older.
One example or ugly fact to illustrate the disconnect between inflammation (relapses and focal MRI activity) and the end-organ (brain volume loss) is the recent ofatumumab vs. teriflunomide trials.
Brain volume loss (↓~0%): Ofatumumab = teriflunomide
If ofatumumab is so much more effective as an anti-inflammatory than teriflunomide why doesn’t it protect the end-organ more than teriflunomide? I don’t know but is clear, at least to me, that there is something else going on that is driving the end-organ damage in MS that is not linked to focal inflammation. Could something about teriflunomide’s mode of action that is downstream of focal inflammation be telling us something fundamental about the cause of MS?
General Disclaimer: Please note that the opinions expressed here are those of Professor Giovannoni and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry nor Barts Health NHS Trust.
Side of the fence: used to refer to either of the opposing positions or interests involved in a particular situation.
Status quo: the current situation; the way things are now. The MS community, i.e. patients and HCPs are content with the status quo and aren’t looking for a change.
NEDA: no evident MS disease activity
The question you need to ask yourself is which side of the fence are you on? MS is a focal inflammatory disease of the central nervous system vs. MS is a smouldering disease process and focal inflammatory events are in response to what is causing the disease. If you favour the former you will be happy with being NEDA-2, i.e. having no relapses or new focal inflammatory lesions. If you are in the latter camp you will want to focus on end-organ damage and preserving your brain and spinal cord volume for old age.
The wider MS community seems to prefer the current dogma and status quo; i.e. that MS is a focal inflammatory disease and that everything we see can be explained by relapses and focal MRI activity. I think this is wrong and have argued this from not only a scientific point of view but also from a philosophical one.
Deciding which side of the fence you are on may make an enormous difference to your outcome. It is clear that not all DMTs are made equal when it comes to preserving brain volume and hence brain reserve.
Did you know that pwMS lose brain volume at a 2-7x faster rate than age-matched controls from the general population? Accelerated brain volume loss predicts and is strongly associated with cognitive impairment and long term disability. The following picture shows you just how much brain someone with MS can lose over an 18 month period.
If we moved our treatment target to go beyond NEDA to focus on protecting the end-organ so that pwMS may have a brain that is in good enough condition to withstand the ageing process in later life I suspect the treatment landscape would change dramatically. To achieve this we need to diagnose MS and treat it early and effectively and in many cases, we need to flip the pyramid and use high efficacy therapies at the beginning, in particular agent such as alemtuzumab and AHSCT, which have been shown to protect the end-organ better than other DMTs.
General Disclaimer: Please note that the opinions expressed here are those of Professor Giovannoni and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry nor Barts Health NHS Trust.
I continue to be amazed when I hear senior MS neurologists make the claim they have never prescribed alemtuzumab or referred any of their patients for HSCT and don’t intend to do so either. These same neurologists seem to be happy with natalizumab and ocrelizumab as their #1 high-efficacy go to DMTs. When I challenge them with the exceptional longterm outcomes for pwMS treated early with alemtuzumab or HSCT I get a glazed look, which I now learnt is cognitive dissonance.
“Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviours. This produces a feeling of mental discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviours to reduce the discomfort and restore balance. For example, when people smoke (behaviour) and they know that smoking causes cancer (cognition), they are in a state of cognitive dissonance.” Source: Simply Psychology
It is quite clear that both ocrelizumab and natalizumab are very effective DMTs at switching-off focal inflammatory disease activity in MS; a large number of pwMS on these therapies are NEDA-2 (relapse-free and no new T2 lesions on MRI). This is interpreted by these neurologists and the wider MS community that MS is all sorted. Go away, get on with your life and be happy.
What these neurologists don’t tell their patients on ocrelizumab and natalizumab that despite no relapses or new MRI lesions the accelerated brain volume loss due to MS is continuing unabated. These neurologists and their patients are being lulled into a sense of false security because they believe MS is focal inflammatory disease, when in fact the real MS is the smouldering disease, which drives end-organ damage.
I have addressed these topics many times on this blog. If you are interested in reading some of my back catalogue of posts on this particular topic you can start with the posts below or you could watch a recent lecture I have given on the topic.
It is clear that not all DMTs are made equal when it comes to preventing end-organ damage. At the top of the league table are alemtuzumab and HSCT (~0.2-0.25% loss per annum). Both these treatments are NIRTs (non-selective immune reconstitution therapies).
Natalizumab is probably next with an annual brain volume loss in the region of 0.25-0.30% per annum. Ocrelizumab (anti-CD20) comes next with a rate of brain volume loss of ~0.374% per annum (see latest data below).
Why do natalizumab and ocrelizumab, despite being very effective anti-inflammatory DMTs have only a moderate impact on end-organ damage? This and other observations have convinced me that MS is not focal inflammation, which represents the immune system’s response to what is causing MS. I suspect there is something going in the CNS of pwMS that is the real MS; I refer to this hypothesis as the ‘Field Hypothesis’.
What these observations are telling us that peripheral B-cells are an important part of the immune response to the cause of MS, but B-cells are not necessarily involved in driving the true MS pathology, which is causing the progressive brain volume loss.
What does this mean for the well-informed person with MS? Firstly, you and your neurologist may not want to dismiss alemtuzumab and HSCT as a first-line, or at least early, treatment option. These non-selective highly effective IRTs differ from anti-CD20 therapies in that they target both B and T cells. I suspect we need to target both these cells types early in the course of the disease to really get on top of the real MS.
I am aware of the appeal of anti-CD20 therapies and natalizumab in that they are safer and easier to use because of less monitoring, however, this may come at a cost in the long-term. Please remember that once you have lost brain you can’t get it back. With alemtuzumab and HSCT, the risk is frontloaded, and balanced against the potential long-term gains in efficacy, which are unprecedented. Choosing a DMT on a rung or two lower down on the therapeutic ladder gives you better short-term safety and makes the life of your MS neurologist less stressful, because of less monitoring and fewer risks, but at a potential long-term cost to your brain and spinal cord.
This is why making an informed decision about which DMT you choose is a very complicated process and subject to subtle and often hidden effects of cognitive biases; cognitive dissonance is just one of these biases. The one bias I am very aware of is the ‘Gambler’s Dilemma’, be careful not to be lulled into a false sense of security by your beliefs; most gamblers eventually end-up losing.
In reality, we need to move treatment target in MS way beyond NEDA-2 to target end-organ damage, i.e. brain volume loss, T1 black holes, the slowly expanding lesions (SELs), neurofilament levels, cognition, sickness behaviour, OCBs, etc. Our treatment aim should be to ‘Maximise Brain Health’ across your life and not just the next few years.
As yet we don’t know what the impact of alemtuzumab and HSCT are on the pathology of smouldering MS, but these agents must be doing something to these pathologies based on clinical and MRI outcomes (see below). Despite this data gap, I think we have enough empirical evidence that alemtuzumab and HSCT are doing some fundamental to the pathology of MS.
Coming back to cognitive dissonance. It could be argued that if an MS neurologist or MS centre does not offer alemtuzumab or HSCT to at least some of their patients then they are not providing their patients with sufficient choice. In addition, they will almost certainly not accept the concept of smouldering MS being the real MS.
Objective: To assess over 3 years of follow-up, the effects of maintaining or switching to ocrelizumab (OCR) therapy on clinical and MRI outcomes and safety measures in the open-label extension (OLE) phase of the pooled OPERA studies in relapsing multiple sclerosis.
Methods: After 2 years of double-blind, controlled treatment, patients continued OCR (600 mg infusions every 24 weeks) or switched from interferon (IFN) β-1a (44 μg 3 times weekly) to OCR when entering the OLE phase (3 years). Adjusted annualized relapse rate, time to onset of 24-week confirmed disability progression/improvement (CDP/CDI), brain MRI activity (gadolinium-enhanced and new/enlarging T2 lesions), and percentage brain volume change were analyzed.
Results: Of patients entering the OLE phase, 88.6% completed Year 5. The cumulative proportion with 24-week CDP was lower in patients who initiated OCR earlier, vs patients initially receiving IFN β-1a (16.1% vs 21.3% at Year 5; p=0.014). Patients continuing OCR maintained, and those switching from IFN β-1a to OCR attained near complete and sustained suppression of new brain MRI lesion activity from Year 3 to 5. Over the OLE phase, patients continuing OCR exhibited less whole brain volume loss from double-blind study baseline vs those switching from IFN β-1a (–1.87% vs –2.15% at Year 5; p<0.01). Adverse events were consistent with past reports and no new safety signals emerged with prolonged treatment.
Conclusion: Compared with patients switching from IFN β-1a, earlier and continuous OCR treatment up to 5 years provided sustained benefit on clinical and MRI measures of disease progression.
Classification of evidence: This study provides Class III evidence that earlier and continuous treatment with ocrelizumab provided sustained benefit on clinical and MRI outcomes of disease activity and progression compared with patients switching from IFN β-1a. The study is rated Class III because of the initial treatment randomization disclosure that occurred after inclusion in OLE.
BACKGROUND: A cohort of patients with poor-prognosis multiple sclerosis (MS) underwent chemotherapy-based immune ablation followed by immune reconstitution with an autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant (IA/aHSCT). This eliminated new focal inflammatory activity, but resulted in early acceleration of brain atrophy.
OBJECTIVE: We modeled the time course of whole-brain volume in 19 patients to identify the baseline predictors of atrophy and to estimate the average rate of atrophy after IA/aHSCT.
METHODS: Percentage whole-brain volume changes were calculated between the baseline and follow-up magnetic resonance imaging (MRI; mean duration: 5 years). A mixed-effects model was applied using two predictors: total busulfan dose and baseline volume of T1-weighted white-matter lesions.
RESULTS: Treatment was followed by accelerated whole-brain volume loss averaging 3.3%. Both the busulfan dose and the baseline lesion volume were significant predictors. The atrophy slowed progressively over approximately 2.5 years. There was no evidence that resolution of edema contributed to volume loss. The mean rate of long-term atrophy was -0.23% per year, consistent with the rate expected from normal aging.
CONCLUSION: Following IA/aHSCT, MS patients showed accelerated whole-brain atrophy that was likely associated with treatment-related toxicity and degeneration of “committed” tissues. Atrophy eventually slowed to that expected from normal aging, suggesting that stopping inflammatory activity in MS can reduce secondary degeneration and atrophy.
OBJECTIVE: To describe detailed MRI results from 2 head-to-head phase III trials, Comparison of Alemtuzumab and Rebif Efficacy in Multiple Sclerosis Study I (CARE-MS I; NCT00530348) and Study II (CARE-MS II; NCT00548405), of alemtuzumab vs subcutaneous interferon β-1a (SC IFN-β-1a) in patients with active relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS).
METHODS: The impact of alemtuzumab 12 mg vs SC IFN-β-1a 44 μg on MRI measures was evaluated in patients with RRMS who were treatment-naive (CARE-MS I) or who had an inadequate response, defined as at least one relapse, to prior therapy (CARE-MS II).
RESULTS: Both treatments prevented T2-hyperintense lesion volume increases from baseline. Alemtuzumab was more effective than SC IFN-β-1a on most lesion-based endpoints in both studies (p < 0.05), including decreased risk of new/enlarging T2 lesions over 2 years and gadolinium-enhancing lesions at year 2. Reduced risk of new T1 lesions (p < 0.0001) and gadolinium-enhancing lesion conversion to T1-hypointense black holes (p = 0.0078) were observed with alemtuzumab vs SC IFN-β-1a in CARE-MS II. Alemtuzumab slowed brain volume loss over 2 years in CARE-MS I (p < 0.0001) and II (p = 0.012) vs SC IFN-β-1a.
CONCLUSIONS: Alemtuzumab demonstrated greater efficacy than SC IFN-β-1a on MRI endpoints in active RRMS. The superiority of alemtuzumab was more prominent during the second year of both studies. These findings complement the superior clinical efficacy of alemtuzumab over SC IFN-β-1a in RRMS.
CLASSIFICATION OF EVIDENCE: The results reported here provide Class I evidence that, for patients with active RRMS, alemtuzumab is superior to SC IFN-β-1a on multiple MRI endpoints.
BACKGROUND: Tissue damage in both multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions and normal-appearing white matter (NAWM) are important contributors to disability and progression. Specific aspects of MS pathology can be measured using advanced imaging. Alemtuzumab is a humanised monoclonal antibody targeting CD52 developed for MS treatment.
OBJECTIVE: To investigate changes over 2 years of advanced magnetic resonance (MR) metrics in lesions and NAWM of MS patients treated with alemtuzumab.
METHODS: A total of 42 relapsing-remitting alemtuzumab-treated MS subjects were scanned for 2 years at 3 T. T1 relaxation, T2relaxation, diffusion tensor, MR spectroscopy and volumetric sequences were performed. Mean T1 and myelin water fraction (MWF) were determined for stable lesions, new lesions and NAWM. Fractional anisotropy was calculated for the corpus callosum (CC) and N-acetylaspartate (NAA) concentration was determined from a large NAWM voxel. Brain parenchymal fraction (BPF), cortical thickness and CC area were also calculated.
RESULTS: No change in any MR measurement was found in lesions or NAWM over 24 months. BPF, cortical thickness and CC area all showed decreases in the first year followed by stability in the second year.
CONCLUSION: Advanced MR biomarkers of myelin (MWF) and neuron/axons (NAA) show no change in NAWM over 24 months in alemtuzumab-treated MS participants.
Louise quotes the American poet Donald Hall, who explains in Essays After Eighty how life is irrevocably and excruciatingly changed when a person must let go of their car: “For years I drove slowly and cautiously, but when I was eighty I had two accidents. I stopped driving before I killed somebody, and now when I shop or see a doctor, someone has to drive me. …Old age is a ceremony of losses.”
Although this refers to old age the same can be said for someone with MS. MS is a sequence of losses. Does it have to be this like this? I hope not, but to get to this position we need to go beyond NEDA.
I am running one of our Barts-MS teaching programmes this week in which a case was presented by one of the delegates. The lady, who is in her early thirties, has a diagnosis of relapsing MS and is NEDA, off therapy for 5 years, i.e. no relapses and no new T2 lesions. However, when you look at her sequential MRIs next to each other it is clear that she has progressive brain volume loss. She has NEDA-3, but clearly, something else is happening to her brain. I suggested to the neurologist looking after this patient to interrogate her in detail, i.e. to measure her brain volume, send her for cognitive testing, arrange for a more objective interrogation of her neurological functioning and to do a lumbar puncture to assess if she has inflammation and ongoing damage as measured by CSF neurofilament levels. In other words, don’t rely on what we have now to assess her MS disease activity.
The problem we have is that we have created a beast called NEDA and the wider MS community now think evident disease activity or EDA (relapses and focal MRI activity) is MS. EDA is obviously not MS. It is clear that EDA in untreated patients is a very poor predictor of outcome. IF EDA was MS it would predict outcome regardless of being treated or not. In other words, EDA fails one of Prentice’s criteria for being a surrogate marker of MS.
Despite writing frequently on the topic that MS is not due to relapses and/or focal MRI activity the dogma seems to stick. I have arguably helped create NEDA as a treatment target and have been responsible for some of its stickiness as a treatment target. Can I admit I am wrong? NEDA is a useful construct, but it is now becoming a barrier to treating MS properly.
If I was a behavioural psychologist I would be referring to NEDA as the new cognitive bias. We need to shift our worldview of MS away from an MRI worldview. What we should be doing is creating a biological worldview of MS and asking what is happening in the ‘field‘ or the brains of people with MS. We have to explain why end-organ damage is ongoing despite switching off focal inflammatory activity. What is driving SELs (slowly expanding lesions), the subpial cortical lesion, grey matter atrophy and the accelerated brain volume loss? If we don’t then MS will remain a sequence of losses.
Why can’t we use anti-CD20 therapies as immune constitution therapies?
For some years we have been promoting our Barts-MS Essential DMT list to treat people with MS (pwMS) in resource-poor environments. One of the big guns on our list has been rituximab (anti-CD20). One of the problems is that rituximab at a dose of 1g every 6 months is still too expensive to accessible for the vast majority of MSers living in these environments. The good news is that several developments have brought the price of rituximab down.
The Swedes, who are treating more than half their MS population, have data showing that 500mg every 6 months is as good as 1g every 6 months in terms of NEDA, i.e. preventing new relapses and new MR lesions from forming.
Rituximab has come off patent and several cheap biosimilars are now entering the market.
The Swedes are also testing adaptive dosing, i.e. after 2 years of 6 monthly infusions, they are extending the interval between doses to 12 months or more and/or are even beginning to redose rituximab based on peripheral memory B-cell reconstitution. At a recent meeting, I was at one Swedish neurologist is beginning to use rituximab as an IRT (immune reconstitution therapy), i.e. only redosing with rituximab if and when disease activity re-emerges.
I classify anti-CD20 therapies as both a maintenance therapy and an IRT. At the last AAN in Los Angeles, I attended a meeting of like-minded clinical scientists to set-up a trial to test anti-CD20 as a maintenance therapy vs. an IRT. The retreatment arms of the trial were to test redosing based on the reemergence of disease activity or the repopulation of memory B cells. Using anti-CD20 therapies as an IRT has appeal as it will almost certainly be safer in terms of infections, the emergence of hypogammaglobulinaemia and ability to respond to vaccines.
I am therefore very interested in seeing the results of the Swedish experiment of testing rituximab as a maintenance therapy vs. rituximab as an IRT. Just maybe we can get the price of treating MS with rituximab down to affordable levels for low-income countries.
The following is a back of envelope calculations based on the current BNF prices:
Mabthera (Roche) 500mg = £873.15 per 500mg vial Rixathon (Sandoz) = £785.84 per 500mg vial Truxima (Napp) = £785.84 per 500mg vial
Standard dose (1g) Mabthera maintenance regimen: 1g Day 0, 1g Day 14 then 1g 6 monthly indefinitely = £873.15 x 10= £8731.50 for the first 2 years and then £3492.60 annually.
Standard dose (1g) biosimilar maintenance regimen: 1g Day 0, 1g Day 14 then 1g 6 monthly indefinitely = £785.84 x 5 = £7858.40 for the first 2 years and then £3143.36 annually.
Reduced dose (500mg) Mabthera maintenance regimen: 1g Day 0, 1g Day 14 then 1g 6 monthly indefinitely = £873.15 x 10= £4365.75 for the first 2 years and then £1746.30 annually.
Reduced dose (500mg) biosimilar maintenance regimen: 1g Day 0, 500mg Day 14 then 500mg 6 monthly indefinitely = £785.84 x 5 = £3929.20 for the first 2 years and then £1571.68 annually.
Reduced dose (500mg) biosimilar maintenance regimen: 500mg Day 0, 500mg Day 14 then 500mg 6 monthly indefinitely = £785.84 x 5 = £3929.20 for the first 2 years and then £1571.68 annually.
Adaptive dose (500mg) biosimilar maintenance regimen: 500mg Day 0, 500mg Day 14 then 500mg 6 monthly for 2year and then 500mg approximately every 12 months = £785.84 x 5 = £3929.20 for the first 2 years and then £785.84 annually (the latter may be lower if redosing is done using peripheral B cell reconstitution).
Please note these figures are the list price and don’t include discounts, VAT nor the infusion costs. In reality, these costs could come down with central, say NHS, purchasing power. Unfortunately, they are still too high to help pwMS in low-income countries. Just maybe getting MS and anti-CD20 therapies onto the WHO Essential Medicines List may bring down the costs by creating political pressure on the Pharma industry or innovations in making cheap biosimilars may also help.
The Caveat
There is one major caveat I have about putting up anti-CD20 as the solution for MS is that we may be getting it wrong. I personally don’t think relapses and focal MRI activity are the disease we call MS; these markers are an inflammatory response to what is causing the disease. Therefore I suspect we may be lulling ourselves into a false sense of security with anti-CD20 therapies and ignoring what is really driving the disease, i.e. what is causing the end-organ damage in MS.
Do we know what is driving the slowly expanding lesion? What is causing the extensive cortical lesions in MS, which we can’t see on conventional MRI? What is driving the progressive brain volume and grey matter loss in MS? Don’t we need to go beyond NEDA as a treatment target? I know some would argue we have done this already, which is why so many MSers want HSCT as a first-line treatment option.
