Comparative Efficacy and Safety of Ozanimod and Dimethyl Fumarate for Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis Using Matching-Adjusted Indirect Comparison

Ozanimod and dimethyl fumarate (DMF) are disease-modifying therapies used to treat relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS). Comparative efficacy and safety evaluation is important to key patients, healthcare providers, and health insurers; however, head-to-head studies between MS therapies are limited. In this analysis, we used an indirect treatment comparison method, specifically a matching-adjusted indirect comparison (MAIC), to compare results of clinical trials of ozanimod and DMF. In this MAIC, findings suggested that ozanimod was associated with greater reductions of relapses, a lowered risk of disability progression at 3 months, and improved safety outcomes compared with DMF. Although MAICs were conducted while adjusting for important treatment-effect modifiers and/or prognostic factors, the possibility of confounding as a result of unobserved baseline differences remains. Such an issue can be resolved only by conducting a head-to-head treatment comparison in a randomized clinical trial.