Margaret Ritchie – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Margaret Ritchie on 2015-02-10.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment he has made of trends in the rates of people being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
Norman Lamb
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance Multiple sclerosis: management of multiple sclerosis in primary and secondary care, updated in October 2014, states that around 100,000 people in the United Kingdom have multiple sclerosis (MS). Estimates from studies on annual incidence are more uncertain, and vary between 2,500 and 6,000 newly diagnosed cases each year. About 85 out of 100 people with MS have relapsing–remitting MS (RRMS) where periods of stability (remission) are followed by episodes when there are exacerbations of symptoms (relapses). About 10 to 15 out of 100 people with MS have primary progressive MS where symptoms gradually develop and worsen over time from the start, without ever experiencing relapses and remissions.
The guidance sets out a range of initial assessments a clinician should make including testing of vision and blood tests before referral to a consultant neurologist who can confirm or exclude a diagnosis of MS, subject to investigation. The guidance makes a range of recommendations on the pharmacological and non-pharmacological management of MS. NICE has recommended a number of drugs for the treatment of MS and is currently appraising Nerventra (laquinimod) for RRMS and ilenya (fingolimod) for primary-progressive MS. In addition over 18,000 patients have benefitted from disease-modifying treatments through the MS risk sharing scheme, established by the Department in 2002.
