Tanuja Chitnis, MD: Nfl Levels In Long-Term MS Outcomes

“As a clinician, it tells me that early treatment and early management, and reducing, potentially, this biomarker at the earliest stage is the most important in long-term outcomes.”

Over the past several years neurofilament light (Nfl) has emerged as an important biomarker of disease activity in multiple sclerosis (MS) due to the ease of collecting its measurement with a highly sensitive single molecule array (SIMOA) based assay. Although, limited data about the correlation of serum Nfl levels and long-term outcomes in MS has been collected.

Tanuja Chitnis, MD, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, and colleagues collected 10-year follow-up data to determine how valuable the biomarker could be in prognosticating long-term outcomes for patients with MS. She and her team analyzed data from the CLIMB study, which included more than 100 patients who were at least 5 years post-disease onset and annual blood samples up to 10 years.

To find out more about the findings of the study, NeurologyLive spoke with Chitnis in an interview, on the floor from the Americas Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ACTRIMS) Forum in Dallas, Texas.

REFERENCE

1. Chitnis T, Gonzalez CT, Healy BC, et al. Neurofilament light chain serum levels correlate with 10-year MRI outcomes in multiple sclerosis. Poster #3585. Presented at: ACTRIMS Forum; February 28 to March 2, 2019; Dallas, TX. actrims.confex.com/actrims/2019/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/3585. Accessed March 19, 2019.