Understanding PIRA in MS: Key Insights and Advances From ECTRIMS 2024

Author(s):

Gabriel Pardo, MD, FAAN,Martin Belkin, DO

Key Takeaways

PIRA represents MS progression without clinical relapses, impacting patients' quality of life by contributing to disability accumulation.
Unlike RAW, PIRA reflects insidious progression, often undetected by traditional relapse-focused assessments.
Evaluating PIRA involves advanced imaging and clinical metrics, as highlighted in ECTRIMS 2024 presentations.
Standardizing PIRA evaluation is crucial for consistent monitoring and treatment strategies, potentially leading to improved patient outcomes.

Panelists discuss how progression independent of relapse activity (PIRA) in multiple sclerosis (MS) represents continuous neurological decline unrelated to inflammatory events, distinct from relapse-associated worsening (RAW). Recent ECTRIMS 2024 presentations emphasized standardized evaluation methods to better understand disease progression and improve patient management strategies.

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EP: 1.Understanding PIRA in MS: Key Insights and Advances From ECTRIMS 2024

EP: 2.The Impact of Biomarkers and Modern Disease-Modifying Therapies in MS

Video content above is prompted by the following:

Cognition and PIRA in MS have received a lot of attention in recent years.
Please provide an overview of PIRA and its potential impact on a patient’s quality of life.
How is PIRA different from RAW?
How is PIRA evaluated? Discuss presentations from ECTRIMS 2024 by Muller and others about standardization of PIRA evaluation and why it might matter.