Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of the number of patients with primary progressive multiple sclerosis who could potentially benefit from treatment with Ocrelizumab.

The Department has made no such assessment. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is currently developing technology appraisal guidance on the use of ocrelizumab for treating primary progressive multiple sclerosis. The final scope for the appraisal states that 10% of patients with multiple sclerosis have the primary progressive subtype.

Ocrelizumab has a marketing authorisation in the United Kingdom “for the treatment of adult patients with early primary progressive multiple sclerosis in terms of disease duration and level of disability, and with imaging features characteristic of inflammatory activity”. Therefore because of the scope of the marketing authorisation, not every patient with primary progressive multiple sclerosis would be eligible for treatment with ocrelizumab as they must be in the early stages of the disease and have inflammatory activity on MRI.