With the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) having rejected the first multiple sclerosis (MS) treatment pill – Gilenya, or fingolimod as it is also called -, the disappointed MS Society has urged NICE and drugmaker Novartis to work together for the reappraisal the drug!

Since fingolimod has already been granted a European license for patients suffering from rapidly-evolving MS, the recommendation by NICE - that the pill should not be made automatically available to patients with multiple sclerosis on the NHS – has come as a big disappointment for the MS Society.

Noting that NICE’s rejection of fingolimod is “disappointing news for people with MS and it will leave some people with no effective treatment option,” Simon Gillespie – CEO of the MS Society – said: “We strongly encourage NICE and Novartis to work together to look at how the treatment can be better reconsidered and evaluated.”

Gillespie also pointed out that the access to MS treatments in the UK is rather poor, vis-à-vis those offered to MS patients who live in other parts of Europe; and expressed the concern that the decision by NICE will further “deepen that inequality.”

Meanwhile, revealing that Novartis had submitted data mainly looking at a subgroup of patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) who experienced at least one relapse a year even after treatment with beta interferon drugs, Professor Carole Longson - director of health technology evaluation centre at NICE – said that there wasn’t enough evidence to show the effectiveness of fingolimod in reducing relapses better than the currently-in
-use treatments!