Multiple Sclerosis: Takeaways From AAN 2020

Jiwon Oh, MD, PhD: Because the American Academy of Neurology Annual Meeting was [canceled and abstracts were published online on AAN.com], unfortunately I wasn’t able to delve into as many abstracts and attend as many talks as I normally would have in person. But on perusal of some of the abstracts, I think there were some interesting clinical trials that were published on newer agents, including newer anti-CD20 agents. And so I think looking at these data are noteworthy.

I also saw some additional abstracts on the concept of progression independent of relapse activity, which is a clinical outcome measure that is emerging to be very important. This is trying to get at the neurodegenerative component of MS [multiple sclerosis], which we thought was really a substrate of progression in MS. And so I think it’s very useful that some of the larger clinical trials that we have assessed these different outcome measures that are highly clinically relevant, particularly when we’re considering people living with progressive MS.

I am also an MRI [magnetic resonance imaging] researcher. There were some interesting novel imaging measures that were reported on, including the central vein sign and the paramagnetic rim sign, and I look forward to hearing more about some of these concepts at future meetings.