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Many patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) who are taking disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) get financial help from pharmaceutical company assistance programs, researchers found.
In an analysis of survey data from the North American Research Committee on MS (NARCOMS) registry, about 25% of those on DMTs got their drugs at no cost or at heavily discounted prices, Guoqiao (Peter) Wang, PhD, of Washington University in St. Louis, and colleagues reported online in Neurology.
Still, some 6% of MS patients said they were not taking disease-modifying drugs because of insurance or financial concerns, the researchers reported.
“If the costs of DMTs continue to rise as they have over the last 5 years, we can expect that they will become unattainable for many individuals with MS,” Wang and colleagues wrote.
MS specialists have increasingly expressed concerns about the combination of high drug prices and insurance barriers as being a major challenge to optimal care.
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