MS patients urge Reilly to make drug available

MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS (MS) patients have called on the Minister for Health James Reilly to make available a new drug which has had a dramatic impact on the chronic illness.

Gilenya has been proven to cut by half the number of relapses suffered by MS patients in a single year as against the conventional IM interferon beta-1a treatment. It also found 83 per cent of MS patients were relapse-free for a year as opposed to 70 per cent of those taking IM interferon beta-1a treatment.

It has the added benefit of being the first oral pill available to MS patients.

The drug was approved earlier this month by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence in the UK which relented after the drug manufacturer, Novartis, lowered the price. The UK now joins a list of European countries including Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, Greece, Spain, Norway, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy, which have approved the drug for use.

MS Ireland has written to Dr James Reilly and the Department of Health urging them to approve the drug after it was approved as cost-effective by the National Centre for Pharmoeconomics in March last year.

MS Ireland chief executive Ava Battles said it was “not acceptable” that people with MS in Ireland had less choice of treatments than their counterparts in other European countries.

Novartis said the company’s proposed pricing for Gilenya was within the price range of disease-modifying therapies on the Irish market.

One of the State’s best-known neurologists, Prof Orla Hardiman, said she had “no doubt” the drug had an extremely beneficial effect, especially on those patients who do not respond well to conventional treatments. “It is a very exciting drug. These are a big breakthrough. Not only are the number of relapses significantly reduced, but the time before you develop secondary progression is extended.”

Prof Hardiman, a consultant neurologist at Beaumont Hospital, said for that reason, the cost was justified.

She said reports that Gilenya had caused 11 deaths from heart failure in patients in the US had to be put in perspective that these patients were at risk from heart failure anyway.

The cost has not been revealed for Ireland. However, in the UK it costs £19,196 (€23,016) per person per year.

In a statement, the HSE said there would be a “significant budget impact” with this drug, but it was still considering how to introduce it when resources become available.