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Review
. 2020 Jun 17;21(12):4312.
doi: 10.3390/ijms21124312.

Approved and Emerging Disease Modifying Therapies on Neurodegeneration in Multiple Sclerosis

Madeline Bross  1 , Melody Hackett  1 , Evanthia Bernitsas  1
Affiliations
Review

Approved and Emerging Disease Modifying Therapies on Neurodegeneration in Multiple Sclerosis

Madeline Bross et al. Int J Mol Sci. .

Abstract

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune, chronic, progressive disease leading to a combination of inflammation, demyelination, and neurodegeneration throughout the central nervous system (CNS). The outcome of these processes can be visualized in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans as brain atrophy, or brain volume loss (BVL), as well as lesions, "black holes" and spinal cord atrophy. MRI outcomes such as BVL have been used as biomarkers of neurodegeneration and other measures of MS disease progression in clinical research settings. Several FDA-approved medications seek to alleviate disease progression by reducing the impact of such factors as demyelination and neurodegeneration, but there are still many shortcomings that current clinical research aims to mitigate. This review attempts to provide an overview of the FDA-approved medications available for treating multiple sclerosis and their effect on neurodegeneration, measured by BVL.

Keywords: brain atrophy; demyelination; disease modifying therapies; multiple sclerosis; neurodegeneration.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest relevant to this manuscript.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Effect of FDA-_approved DMT on brain atrophy. DMT: Disease modifying treatment. FTY: Fingolimod, TER: Teriflunomide, DMF: Dimethylfumarate, SIP: Siponimod, CLAD: Cladribine, GA: Glatiramer acetate, INF: Interferons, OCR: Ocrelizumab, NTZ: Natalizumab, ALEM: Alemtuzumab, WML: white matter loss, GML: gray matter loss, BVL: brain volume loss.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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