Off-Adherence Keeping (OAK) observational study: intentional off-adherence immunomodulatory multiple sclerosis treatment.

Prior research suggests that taking the drug IFNß-1a through less frequent muscle injections enables more patients to adhere to their prescription than taking other medications. This study included 181 Italian patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS) who historically did not take medication as often as prescribed. Relapses of MS were counted among patients treated with muscle injections of IFNß-1a for 2 years; 97.4% of patients followed their prescription and 22.1% experienced a relapse. From these data, 78% of patients were estimated not to experience a relapse during 2 years of IFNß-1a muscle injections. However, an unusually high number of patients (52.5%) left the study within 2 years, which makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions.