Abstract

Objectives

The objective of this study was to determine by a conjoint analysis the preferences for a range of disease-modifying treatment attributes in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and treating neurologists.

Methods

This was a cross-sectional study throughout Argentina between August 2020 and February 2021. Participating patients were adults with relapsing-remitting MS, who had received a long-term specific disease-modifying treatment for at least the past 3 months and their treating neurologist. Patients and neurologist were sampled from the Argentinean MS patient registry (RelevarEM). We applied the methodology of conjoint analysis. Patient preferences for hypothetical treatment were collected from the overall sample and from stratified subgroups according to the expanded disability status scale (EDSS) score. An ordinary least squares regression model was used to estimate parameters.

Results

A total of 275 patients from 25 centers (31 principal investigators) were included, mean age was 43.2 ± 10.9 years, 59.6% were female, and mean EDSS was 3.1 ± 2. For the entire sample, we observed that patients had higher preferences for treatments with lower side effect risks (28.7 relative preference [RP]), lower frequency of administration (21.4 RP), and higher impact on relapses (19.6 RP). Patients with a higher EDSS give significantly greater importance to a less frequent administration regime and the oral route than patients with a lower EDSS (23.5 RP vs 20.1 [P =.02] and 17.1 vs 15.3 [P =.03], respectively). For neurologists, the most important attribute was to prevent disease progression (RP 29.3).

Conclusion

Our study contributes to the understanding of treatment selection preferences from the perspectives of both patient and neurologists.