Two competing pills to treat multiple sclerosis could reach the market this year or next, after excellent clinical trial results were reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. Until now the estimated 2.5m people worldwide with relapsing MS have been treated with injections that have only limited efficacy and serious side-effects. The two pills, cladribine and fingolimod, work much better than existing treatments or placebo, according to three large clinical trials with a total of 3,800 patients. ‘This is great news for people with MS and signifies a shifting tide in the treatment of the condition, said Doug Brown, biomedical research manager at the London-based MS Society. ‘Availability of oral therapies will give people greater choice, and being able to take a tablet instead of unpleasant injections will come as welcome relief. Until recently it seemed that cladribine, made by Merck of Germany, led the race to bring an MS pill to market. But fingolimod from Novartis of Switzerland may be catching up. The market for MS drugs is worth $7bn (€5bn, £4.3bn) a year but this is likely to grow substantially when oral treatments become available. The latest clinical trials suggest cladribine and fingolimod […]