Severity of COVID19 infection among patients with multiple sclerosis treated with interferon-β

S Simpson-Yap; A Pirmani; E De Brouwer; LM Peeters; L Geys; T Parciak; A Helme; J Hillert; Y Moreau; G Edan; T Spelman; S Sharmin; R McBurney; H Schmidt; A Bergmann; S Braune; A Stahmann; R Middleton; A Salter; B Bebo; A van der Walt; H Butzkueven; S Ozakbas; R Karabudak; C Boz; R Alroughani; JI Rojas; I van der Mei; G Sciascia do Olival; M Magyari; R Alonso; R Nicholas; A Chertcoff; A Zabalza; G Arrambide; N Nag; A Descamps; L Costers; R Dobson; A Miller; P Rodrigues; V Prčkovska; G Comi; T Kalincik

Journal article

Severity of COVID19 infection among patients with multiple sclerosis treated with interferon-β

S Simpson-Yap, A Pirmani, E De Brouwer, LM Peeters, L Geys, T Parciak, A Helme, J Hillert, Y Moreau, G Edan, T Spelman, S Sharmin, R McBurney, H Schmidt, A Bergmann, S Braune, A Stahmann, R Middleton, A Salter, B Bebo Show all

Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders | Published : 2022

DOI: 10.1016/j.msard.2022.104072

Abstract

Background: Interferon-β, a disease-modifying therapy (DMT) for MS, may be associated with less severe COVID-19 in people with MS. Results: Among 5,568 patients (83.4% confirmed COVID-19), interferon-treated patients had lower risk of severe COVID-19 compared to untreated, but not to glatiramer-acetate, dimethyl-fumarate, or pooled other DMTs. Conclusions: In comparison to other DMTs, we did not find evidence of protective effects of interferon-β on the severity of COVID-19, though compared to the untreated, the course of COVID19 was milder among those on interferon-β. This study does not support the use of interferon-β as a treatment to reduce COVID-19 severity in MS.

University of Melbourne Researchers

Steve Simpson-Yap Author

Timothy Spelman Author

Sifat Sharmin Author

Nupur Nag Author

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Grants

Awarded by Merck

Funding Acknowledgements

The author (s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The opera-tional costs linked to this study are funded by the Multiple Sclerosis International Federation (MSIF) and the Multiple Sclerosis Data Alliance (MSDA) , acting under the umbrella of the European Charcot Foundation (ECF) . The MSDA received income from a range of corporate sponsors, recently including Biogen, Bristol-Myers Squibb (formerly Celgene) , Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Merck, Novartis, QMENTA, and Roche. MSIF receives income from a range of corporate sponsors, recently including Biogen, Bristol-Myers Squibb (formerly Celgene) , Genzyme, Med-Day, Merck, Novartis and Roche. This work was supported by the Flemish Government (department EWI) under the Onderzoeksprogramma Artificiele Intelligentie (AI) Vlaanderen (the Flanders AI Research Programme) and the Research Foundation Flanders (Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO) for ELIXIR Belgium (I002819N) , The central platform was provided by QMENTA and the computational resources used in this work were provided by Amazon. The statistical analysis was carried out at CORe, The University of Melbourne, with support from NHMRC [1129189 and 1140766] .