Comparative effectiveness of teriflunomide and dimethyl fumarate in patients with relapsing forms of MS in the retrospective real-world Teri-RADAR study.

AIM: Head-to-head clinical trials of teriflunomide (TFM) versus dimethyl fumarate (DMF) have not been conducted.

OBJECTIVES

To compare the real-world effectiveness of TFM versus DMF.

METHODS

Anonymized data were collected from patients with relapsing multiple sclerosis (MS) initiating treatment with teriflunomide (N = 50) or DMF (N = 50).

RESULTS

On follow-up magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) compared with baseline, with TFM versus DMF treatment, the proportion of patients with new/enlarging T2 or gadolinium-enhancing lesions was 30.0 versus 40.0% (p = 0.2752). However, median annualized percent whole brain volume change was -0.1 versus -0.5 (p = 0.0212). There were no significant treatment differences on additional MRI and clinical end points and no unexpected safety signals.

CONCLUSION

The effectiveness of teriflunomide was superior to DMF on whole brain atrophy and similar to DMF on other MRI/clinical end points.