The Effect of Cladribine Tablets in People With More Active Multiple Sclerosis: A Plain Language Summary

Abstract

What is this summary about?

This article summarizes the findings from a previously published article in Current Medical Research and Opinion. Cladribine tablets are an oral treatment for relapsing multiple sclerosis (shortened to MS), that are given for 4 periods of 4 to 5 days over 2 years (for a total of 20 days). In this analysis, researchers looked at the effects of taking either cladribine tablets or placebo (dummy pills) in a group of people with MS who had more active MS inflammation and had participated in a clinical study (called the CLARITY study). Some of these participants had taken prior medicines for MS.

What were the results?

Researchers found that in people with more active MS, treatment with cladribine tablets led to a lower risk of relapse and there were more people who had no relapses. People also had a lower chance of their MS worsening and had fewer new lesions in the brain. These benefits were seen regardless of whether the participants had prior treatment.

What do the results mean?

Researchers concluded that in these people with more active MS, treatment with cladribine tablets led to better outcomes over 2 years compared with treatment with placebo tablets, regardless of whether the participants had taken any prior MS treatments.

Clinical Trial Registration: NCT00213135 (ClinicalTrials.gov)

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Link to original article here

Keywords:

• cladribine tablets
• CLARITY
• clinical trial
• lay summary
• multiple sclerosis
• plain language summary
• relapses
• treatment options

This article is related to:

Efficacy of cladribine tablets in high disease activity patients with relapsing multiple sclerosis: post hoc analysis of subgroups with and without prior disease-modifying drug treatment

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank everyone who took part in the CLARITY study.

Ethical conduct of research

CLARITY was approved by an independent ethics committee and conducted in accordance with relevant clinical guidelines. All patients provided written informed consent.

Who sponsored this study?

This study was sponsored by EMD Serono Inc., Rockland, MA, USA, an affiliate of Merck KGaA (CrossRef Funder ID: 10.13039/100004755).

Financial & competing interests disclosure

Plain language summary writing and editorial support was provided by Rebecca Harris, PhD, Dena McWain, Martin Edwards, and Delisa O’Brien of Ashfield MedComms (New York, NY, USA), an Inizio company, and was funded by EMD Serono Inc., Rockland, MA, USA, an affiliate of Merck KGaA. The authors had full control of this summary and provided their final approval of all content.

Full author disclosure information for the authors can be found in the original article.