Treatments for fatigue in multiple sclerosis: a rapid and systematic review

Branas P, Jordan R, Fry-Smith A, Burls A, Hyde C
Record ID 32000000908
English
Authors' objectives:

- To identify current treatments for fatigue in MS and their evidence-base.

- To systematically review the evidence for those treatments that have been investigated in more than one rigorous study, in order to determine their effectiveness and cost-effectiveness.

Authors' results and conclusions: Effectiveness of amantadine One parallel and three crossover trials were found, involving a total of 236 people with MS. All studies were open to bias. All studies showed a pattern in favour of amantadine compared with placebo, but there is considerable uncertainty about the validity and clinical significance of this finding. This pattern of benefit was considerably undermined when different assumptions were used in the sensitivity analysis. Effectiveness of pemoline One parallel and one crossover trial were found involving a total of 126 people with MS. Both studies were open to bias. There was no overall tendency in favour of pemoline over placebo and an excess of reports of adverse effects with pemoline.
Authors' recommendations: There is insufficient evidence to allow people with MS, clinicians or policy makers to make informed decisions on the appropriate use of the many treatments on offer. Only amantadine appears to have some proven ability to alleviate the fatigue in MS, though only a proportion of users will obtain benefit and then only some of these patients will benefit sufficiently to take the drug in the long term.
Authors' methods: Systematic review
Details
Project Status: Completed
URL for project: http://www.hta.ac.uk/1167
Year Published: 2000
English language abstract: An English language summary is available
Publication Type: Not Assigned
Country: England, United Kingdom
MeSH Terms
  • Amantadine
  • Costs and Cost Analysis
  • Fatigue
  • Multiple Sclerosis
  • Pemoline
Contact
Organisation Name: NIHR Health Technology Assessment programme
Contact Address: NIHR Journals Library, National Institute for Health and Care Research, Evaluation, Trials and Studies Coordinating Centre, Alpha House, University of Southampton Science Park, Southampton SO16 7NS, UK
Contact Name: journals.library@nihr.ac.uk
Contact Email: journals.library@nihr.ac.uk
Copyright: 2009 Queen's Printer and Controller of HMSO
This is a bibliographic record of a published health technology assessment from a member of INAHTA or other HTA producer. No evaluation of the quality of this assessment has been made for the HTA database.