Acne drug may help treat MS

U OF C RESEARCH FINDS COMMON ACNE DRUG CAN BE USED TO TREAT MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS

When Jill was 27, she woke up with tingling and numbness in her left hand that eventually spread to half her body.

The Calgary woman, who did not want her last name used for fear it could hinder her future employment, went for tests and was told there was a possibility she would develop multiple sclerosis, a disease of the central nervous system.

Jill was enrolled two months later in a clinical trial led by University of Calgary researchers studying whether minocycline, a common acne drug, could be a more affordable treatment for those in the early stages of MS.

“I was happy in this case to help in any way I could,” said Jill, now 34. “It was an easy decision for me personally.”

The results of the Phase 3 trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, showed that minocycline, an antibiotic, works just as well as the current available MS therapies.

But instead of costing more than $20,000 a year in Canada, minocycline would have an annual price tag of just $600.

Making treatment more readily accessible would be a major benefit for those early on in the disease, said Wee Yong, one of the study’s authors.

“We do know that time matters in MS. Time is brain loss in MS,” said Yong, a University of Calgary neuroscientist who has been studying minocycline as a potential MS treatment for nearly two decades.

The current treatment for MS involves injections that require frequent blood monitoring.

Minocycline can be taken orally and the most common side effects are initial dizziness and digestive upset. It’s been on the market for decades and does not need further Health Canada approval to be used as an off-label drug for MS, the researchers say.

For the Phase 3 trial, the researchers studied 142 people across Canada between 18 and 60 who had recently experienced symptoms for the first time, but had not been formally diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

About two-thirds of people who experience MS-like symptoms once — called a clinically isolated syndrome — go on to be diagnosed with the chronic disease within six months, said lead researcher and University of Calgary neurologist Luanne Metz.

In the clinical trial, 61 per cent of participants developed full-blown MS in that time frame, as predicted.