Transcript
Announcer:
This is NeuroFrontiers on ReachMD. On this episode, we’ll hear from Dr. Ethan Meltzer, Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology and the Program Director of the Neurology Residency at the University of Texas at Austin. He’ll be discussing how we can incorporate emerging biomarkers in multiple sclerosis management. Here’s Dr. Meltzer now.
Dr. Meltzer:
As we're all learning and the diagnostic criteria have recently changed, looking and assessing for some of these more advanced metrics can be a bit challenging, I think, even just from a practical standpoint and from a payer standpoint, at least for our US-based listeners.
I do think that this is something that, right now, if you're a neurologist and you have access to this type of testing, is something that, to me, can lead to both earlier and more competent diagnosis now that I have these more specific markers. It's something that I can use in actually many different situations, so the early, the late, as well as the very common clinical situations. For example, resuming a disease-modifying therapy postpartum and helping to guide this conversation with women going through pregnancy, potentially, it can give us better markers of what really counts as no evidence of disease activity.
It can allow us to potentially begin to prognosticate, but there are limitations here. And one challenging limitation is sometimes some of these markers, or at least some of these serum markers, aren't specific to MS, and that can be a challenge, especially in an aging population—how to interpret, for example, evidence of neuronal damage.
So I think that it's really a new frontier and a whole new era, and so we're starting to use these, and the way that I use them, at least in my clinic with the patients I'm seeing, is I really try and explain to them, what do we know? What are our limitations? I find that they do really appreciate that conversation, and that this is something that is very cutting edge, but there is a little bit of a disclaimer here that we don't have an entire generation of people with MS where we've tracked this and have data in terms of how this influences our decisions clinically. But this really is starting to take hold, and we see it more and more.
Announcer:
That was Dr. Ethan Meltzer sharing how we can navigate the use of emerging biomarkers in multiple sclerosis care. To access this and other episodes in our series, visit NeuroFrontiers on ReachMD.com, where you can Be Part of the Knowledge. Thanks for listening!
