Looking for advice... DMT what do you recommend us to start with?
Hey everyone. I'm helping my wife figure out which DMT is the safest to take. Meeting with our neurologist this week to discuss options. She has only had one episode of Optic Neuritis in early 2014. Since then some short false alarm visits (strange vision issues) to the ER and no other symptoms. There are some old inactive lesions on Brain MRI and some "scattered areas of increased signal in the cervical spinal cord, largest of which is posterior to the C2 vertebral body" (whatever that means) on the cervical spine as of January 2021. Do we go with Avonex (once a week injection), Copaxone (three times a week injection), Aubajio (a couple of pills per day)? Our goal probably like anyone else is to avoid disability especially in her eye. We want to protect her with the least amount of side effects i.e. the safest DMTs. What do you guys recommend? Thank you all in advance.
@ilovemywife Try Dr Aaron Boster on Youtube. He is an American neurologist and you may find his advice useful. Dr Brandon Bieber is the other one though he is very clinical. MS charities are also a good start. Difficult giving advice as we all have had different experiences. Medical practitioners are the best, and you can change if you find that the current treatment isn't suitable.
@ilovemywife , it's good of you to join us on behalf of your wife. Hopefully, she appreciates the support you are giving her. There are a range of DMTs now available. The latter ones do appear to be more effective. It seems that you have discounted the "escalation" strategy for selecting DMTs by your desire to avoid and further disabling episodes.This would then suggest that you should be considering Ocrevus, Tysabri and Lemtrada. The potential side-effects do sound scary at first, although the risk of these is mitigated by regular monitoring.