Multiple sclerosis: from new approved "disease - modifying" drugs to trial therapies

Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a very common disease in the Western world and in Italy it is estimated that there are over one hundred thousand of patients, like HIV infection. In recent years, progress has been made with regard to lines of treatment and new drugs have been approved and already available and have changed the history of the disease making it favorable in most cases. Methods: the search for the articles to be included was conducted through the use of databases such as pubmed, scopus, researchgate, google scholar, by typing in keywords such as "multiple sclerosis therapies" the names of the new drugs and integrating with literature data. Results: The purpose of this article is to expose the characteristics of the most recent approved drugs, including oral ones, evaluating, based on clinical studies, their pharmacodynamic characteristics and adverse reactions, and finally to expose some of the compounds undergoing approval or innovative evaluation that in the coming months or years they may be commercially available. Conclusions: Disease-modifying therapies work both on the control of the underlying pathological process, limiting immune-mediated inflammation, and partly on the mechanism of neurodegeneration by slowing the progression. These drugs have shown remarkable results in decreasing the attack rate. However, there are still no definitive therapies, even if there are neuroprotective and remyelinating therapies in experimentation that seem to give very good results.