Barry Singer, MD, is the Director of the MS Center for Innovations in Care at Missouri Baptist Medical Center in St. Louis, Missouri. He explains why it’s important to have clear expectations about what multiple sclerosis treatments can and can’t do.

So I think we have to have realistic expectations of what the medications do. I think some people go on an MS medication and they think their fatigue should be better, their cognition — thinking — better, memory better. Burning pain should improve.

But, you know, if some of these symptoms have been going on for years, it’s not going to repair the damage of MS. Really, it’s to prevent future damage going forward.

So I think it’s important that we all have realistic expectations of what the medications can do and what they do.

You know, they can be extremely effective. I mean, some of our medications prevent 97% of the lesions on the brain compared to an older treatment. So a very effective treatment going forward, but we have to have realistic expectations of what they’re going to actually do.