MS drug could cause NHS crisis
By Charles Arthur, Science Editor

A NEW drug treatment that will help thousands of people with multiple
sclerosis (MS) could create a financial crisis for the health service, by
costing tens of millions of pounds as budgets are further squeezed.

Results of a twoyear international clinical trial, to be announced
tomorrow at a medical conference in Turkey, show that about 10 per cent of
MS sufferers benefit significantly when given injections of a drug called
interferon beta three times a week.

However, the drug is very expensive. A full year's course for one person
costs between £8,000 and £10,000. In the UK, where about 80,000 people have
MS, that could mean an ongoing bill of £80m to treat 8,000 or so patients
who are not fully disabled. This poses a painful dilemma for the NHS, as
sufferers currently cost it almost nothing because they are not prescribed
fulltime drugs.

"MS doesn't cost the NHS a lot of money because there was very little
doctors could do," says Brian Gunson, a spokesman for Serono Laboratories,
which makes interferon beta. "When people are disabled, it's a cost for
social services."

In the past the NHS has resisted calls to provide interferon beta on the
basis that clinical trials have produced mixed results. But the latest
trial, with patients in nine countries including the UK, US and Australia,
is scientifically copperbottomed.

Professor Richard Hughes of Guy's Hospital said: "This trial is
dramatically positive. This stuff does work."

The drug is likely to be licensed in the UK by March or April of next year.