Recent trends in disease-modifying therapy use and associated sickness absence and disability pension among people with multiple sclerosis in Sweden.

BACKGROUND

Disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) have led to improved health and work productivity among people with multiple sclerosis (PwMS).

OBJECTIVES

To describe trajectories of recent DMT use and their association with sickness absence and/or disability pension (SADP) among PwMS in Sweden.

METHODS

A longitudinal register-based study was conducted among 1395 PwMS with treatment start in 2014/2015. While DMT use over 5 years was assessed using sequence analysis resulting in four clusters, a 7-year (Y

RESULTS

Four clusters of DMT use trajectories were identified:

CONCLUSION

Using sequence analysis, this study showed recent DMT use trajectories among PwMS where initiation of high-efficacy DMTs has become more common. The trend of SADP was stable and lower in those using non-high-efficacy DMTs and larger improvements were shown in those initiating high-efficacy DMTs.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: F.S.T. is funded partly by unrestricted research grant from Biogen and Celgene/Bristol-Myers Squibb. A.M. is funded partly by unrestricted research grant from Biogen. K.F. received honoraria for serving on advisory boards for Biogen, Merck, and Roche and speaker’s fees from Merck. H.G. has previously been funded partly by unrestricted research grant from Biogen. At the time of conducting this study, H.G. was employed by IQVIA; a contract research organization that performs commissioned pharmacoepidemiological studies and therefore was collaborating with several pharmaceutical companies. J.H. received honoraria for serving on advisory boards for Biogen, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Janssen, Merck KGaA, Novartis, Sandoz, and Sanofi-Genzyme and speaker’s fees from Biogen, Janssen, Novartis, Merck, Teva, Sandoz, and Sanofi-Genzyme. He has served as P.I. for projects sponsored by, or received unrestricted research support from, Biogen, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Janssen, Merck KGaA, Novartis, Roche, and Sanofi-Genzyme. His MS research is funded by the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish Brain foundation. E.F. has previously been funded partly by an unrestricted research grant from Biogen, has received unrestricted research grants from Celgene/Bristol-Myers Squibb, and speaker’s fees from Merck.