Question 13: Can we personalize MS treatment using biomarkers?
Answer: Biomarkers are a range of measures, which can highlight activity in a given cell or organism, at a given time. They are used in healthcare to assess a variety of factors, such as presence of disease, the progression of disease or treatment effects. Biomarkers help find the right treatment for each person and have been used within healthcare specialities such as blood and respiratory diseases, as well as for cancer treatments. Researchers are working on this to make MS care better.
The article below discusses the current drawbacks when using the neurofilament light chain (NfL) biomarker found in the spinal fluid, to monitor disease activity in MS. It looks at the classic diagnostic markers, such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and spinal fluid testing, along with biomarkers relating to different damage, dysfunction, and inflammation, as well as the future bioinformatic approach, which uses computer science to further understand the biomarker results.
Current and Future Biomarkers in Multiple Sclerosis
Oxford University have been attempting to devise technology that will correctly be able evaluate disease category in individual patients, which would allow clinicians a tool to allocate patients to a treatment that is highly specific and sensitive to their requirements. They hope to carry out larger clinical trials to test this technology in the future.
Multiple sclerosis diagnostic/prognostic
The MS Society website also provide further information regarding biomarkers in MS; please follow the link below: