Preventing disability

Commencing January 2022, Dr Izanne Roos was awarded a 3-year Trish Translational Research Project Grant titled, “Personalised therapy to prevent disability in aggressive multiple sclerosis”.

In this Research Project Dr Roos is aiming to validate statistical models which can predict an individual’s risk of developing eight key multiple sclerosis milestones. She will then establish whether early use of the most potent therapies can improve disease outcomes in those patients at high risk of aggressive forms of multiple sclerosis.

Dr Roos is using data from big MS registries (MSBase, an international registry and OFSEP, the French National registry), utilising cohorts of patients living with MS from Barcelona and Melbourne from early after MS onset.  Dr Roos and her team have successfully validated a prognostic model developed in Barcelona that creates an individualised prediction model for the 10-year risk of eight relevant milestones (relapses, MRI activity and disability accumulation). This can be used in future to gauge an individual’s future risk of disease severity.

Dr Roos and her team have studied the effectiveness of high-efficacy therapies in people with MS at the highest (and lowest) risk of developing disability. They have found that high-efficacy therapy reduces risk of relapse and disability accumulation in all patients, irrespective of their risk of aggressive MS. This emphasises the importance of high-efficacy therapy in improving outcomes in people with MS.

There were seven publications during the year showing expertise in the analysis and interpretation of observational data.  Manuscripts are in preparation and Conference presentations will be submitted for 2024 ECTRIMS, the world’s largest MS Research Congress which attracts an estimated 9,000 delegates from all corners of the world.

Subsequent analyses will directly explore the timing of high-efficacy therapy on disease outcomes and we look forward to hearing of Dr Roos’ continuing progress with this important work.