The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Extavia® (interferon beta-1b), the first in a new planned portfolio of multiple sclerosis (MS) medicines from Novartis to help patients manage this disease.

Extavia is approved by the FDA for the treatment of relapsing forms of MS to reduce the frequency of clinical exacerbations. The therapy is also indicated for patients who have experienced a first clinical episode of MS and have features consistent with the disease as shown by magnetic resonance imaging.

The same medicinal product as Betaseron®, Extavia offers patients and physicians a new branded version of interferon beta-1b, a first-line disease-modifying therapy that has been a standard-of-care for MS in the US for more than 16 years. Extavia will be marketed by the Pharmaceuticals Division of Novartis.

“Interferon is a mainstay of treatment in MS,” said Doug Jeffery, MD, associate professor at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA. “With the approval of Extavia, patients have another option with a well-established safety and efficacy profile to help manage this disease.”

For more information, please visit www.novartis.com.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 28th, 2009 at 1:21 pm and is filed under News Alerts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.