Daniel Ontaneda, MD, PhD: Switching Therapies for Patients With MS

“You have to make an individualized decision and it has to be based on the mechanism of action of the medication you’re coming off of, how quickly you think that medication is going to stop acting, and how active the patient’s disease activity was to start with.”

When presenting data on the real-world use of the relapsing or primary progressive forms of multiple sclerosis (MS) treatment ocrelizumab (Ocrevus, Genentech), Daniel Ontaneda, MD, and his colleagues were often asked about the wash-out periods their patients undertook when switching from their original therapy.

As such, the staff neurologist at Cleveland Clinic's Mellen Center spoke about his best practices in providing patients the proper amount of washout time when switching from one disease-modifying therapy to another. Ultimately, there is variability, and he noted that it has to be an individualized method for each patient, with the goal of minimizing the washout period, as that time frame is the time in which they are at the highest risk for a potential relapse.

To find out more about his best practices and any advice he had for his peers who might be switching a patient’s MS therapy, NeurologyLive spoke with Ontaneda in an interview on the floor of the Americas Committee for Treatment and Research in MS (ACTRIMS) in Dallas, Texas.