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This is the text, and the original authors reply. To the Editor: Mullen et al. (Feb. 7 issue)1 report on two cases of melanoma in patients with multiple sclerosis who received natalizumab. Their letter shows the limited interpretability of individual case reports in establishing cause-and-effect rel...

I think this is extremely important! The results are very strong - 21 out of 22 samples from (deceased) MS patients were positive for EBV, and none(!) of the samples from other inflammatory brain conditions showed it. Also, a new form of tertiary lymphatic tissue, containing EBV-specific B cells was...

My conclusion is the opposite.
This patient wasn't on combo therapy, the immunosuppressents he/she got were before tysabri.
Clearly no avonex was involved.
This is really bad news for all of us that hoped PML cases arose due to the combo.

Guy

1) Since they tested for nAbs in the trial - it's obvious there is a technical way to test for it. 2) They stated specifically that nAbs make the drug ineffective - one would like to move to a different drug if that's the case – for newly diagnosed patients those are options. 3) I'm not sure if it's...

This was our experience exactly,
If you know your stuff and can make a few phone calls, you canget Tysabri approved by your insurance (United Health Care, in our case) within 2 days.
We had to wait a month for Biogen to act before we found that out.


Guy

Harry/Bebe In a relatively short follow-up (2 years), aveareg EDSS won't move much in either the control group or the placebo group. It takes the entire course of the disease (typically 30 y or so) to go from 0 to 10 (and most won’t get to 10, as they'll die from other causes). Risk for increased di...

Bebe and HarryZ, I'm not sure you understand what "slicing the data means" in statistics lingo. The only way we can tell if Tysabri is any better at reducing disability than CRABs is by trying to analyze it the same way it was done in the trials that used the CRABS (i.e., slicing it differ...

Hi

Based on the questions you were asked?
Biogen-elan or their competitors?

Guy