How COViMS Registry Is Clarifying MS COVID-19 Risks: Amber Salter, MPH, PhD

"It’s been nice to get to this point where we are making more confident statements about some of the risks we’re seeing.”

The COViMS (COVID-19 Infections in MS & Related Diseases) registry is a joint effort organized at the beginning of the pandemic to capture information on outcomes of people with multiple sclerosis (MS) and other central nervous system (CNS) demyelinating diseases (such as neuromyelitis optica or MOG antibody disease) who have COVID-19. The collaboration was between the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers, National MS Society, and the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada and has since collected data on over 2000 patients to this point.

Now, the United States is in a different state with the virus than it once was over a year ago, mainly due to the development of vaccines and use of PPE. Amber Salter, MPH, PhD, assistant professor of biostatistics, Washington University in St. Louis, claims that large sample sizes such as those from COViMS could assist in understanding more about treatment with disease-modifying therapies play a role not only amid COVID-19, but on the effects from the vaccine as well.

In this interview with NeurologyLive, Salter discusses the advantages the registry offer the MS patient and physician community at this point in the pandemic and what she’s learned working with the COViMS registry.