An article on alfacalcidol is in the latest issue of
Neurology Now, August -September 2014:
POSSIBLE TREATMENT FOR FATIGUE IN MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS
In another study presented at the AAN Annual Meeting, alfacalcidol—a synthetic form of vitamin D—was found to significantly improve fatigue among people with multiple sclerosis (MS).Fatigue related to MS can occur daily, often gets worse as the day goes on, and is intensified by heat and humidity. MS-related fatigue is not directly correlated with either depression or the degree of neurologic disability. In addition, no medication has been approved specifically for fatigue caused by MS.The study—presented by Anat Achiron, MD, PhD, director of the Multiple Sclerosis Center at Sheba Medical Center in Israel and sponsored by drug-maker Teva Pharmaceuticals—involved 158 MS patients reporting that fatigue impacts their lives and who had poor scores on scales, including the Fatigue Severity Scale and Fatigue Impact Scale (FIS), in which patients answer questions about how fatigue is affecting their lives. Eighty were randomized to receive alfacalcidol, and 78 were randomized to get a placebo over eight months.Those in the alfacalcidol group improved by 41.6 percent, while those in the placebo group improved by 27.4 percent.“Alfacalcidol is a safe and effective treatment strategy for treating fatigue in MS,” Dr. Achiron says.John R. Corboy, MD, Fellow of the AAN, professor of neurology at the University of Colorado, and co-director of the Rocky Mountain MS Center at Anschutz Medical Campus, says the study was interesting but that he isn't ready to fully embrace the results. The placebo effect was large, he notes, with a decrease of 27 percent in FIS scores in the placebo group.Nonetheless, if the study could be repeated with better controls and analysis, “this would be an additional compelling argument to use vitamin D regularly in all relapsing MS patients,” Dr. Corboy says.