Preventing disability in aggressive MS

Commencing January 2020, Associate Professor Anneke Van der Walt, Monash University was awarded a Trish Translational Research Grant over three years funded by the Trish MS Research Foundation. A/Prof Van der Walt’s research is titled, “Active Participatory Health Monitoring in people with Multiple Sclerosis (Active-MS)”.  Co-Investigators are Professor Helmut Butzkueven, Dr Vilija Jokubaitis, Dr Scott Kolbe, Associate Professor Adam Vogel, Associate Professor David Darby, Dr Jim Stankovich, Professor Richard Macdonell.

The aim of the Active MS study is to investigate if simple tests that can be completed at home on a smartphone, can be used to show early changes in MS disability. Measuring early changes in MS disability is important as it can be a sign that an individual patient is not doing well on their current MS therapy.  For this study the team aimed to recruit up to 300 participants from four different MS outpatient clinics in Victoria. The participants were asked to complete a series of simple tests using their smartphone at home, over at least one year. They also shared information about their MS and MRI scans, which was collected during their routine MS clinic visits, over 3 years. The team aimed to link all of this information to see how well the smartphone tests can predict changes in MS disability over time.  So far, they have recruited 191 participants.  The team needed to extend the recruitment due to delays caused by the Covid pandemic.  The early results show that some of these smartphone tests are likely to be effective at measuring disability in MS, as they align well with the disability scores given by doctors at the start of the study.  The team are still investigating if these tests can be used to predict if a patient will have a good or poor disability outcome on their MS treatment.

This grant has now ended, but the team were able to use the design and early data from this study to find other industry funding support for an extension study.  As many of the participants are now also taking part in this extension study and are also part of the long-term MSBase registry study, the team can continue to collect information so that they can complete the final analysis for the study next year.

Associate Professor Van der Walt and her team aim to complete the smartphone application data collection by mid-2024 at all sites. In addition, the team will continue to collect clinical data from these participants in MSBase until the end of the year, so that the analyses can be completed next year.  The team also plan to combine these data with that of the MoreActive MS extension study, so that the statistical power can be increased to address the study aims.  Associate Professor Van der Walt and her team plan to publish the results of the combined studies in 2025.

This study has contributed to successful collaborations with Redenlab, Sydney Neuroimaging Analysis Center, and Roche.

We look forward to the final results of this very important study.