The Effect of Edaravone on Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a neurodegenerative disease, is fatal within 3 years of symptom onset. Both upper motor neurons and lower motor neurons are targeted. It is hypothesized that: edaravone is effective at managing ALS. This review article used a combination of secondary and primary research articles to gain a plethora of information to help test this hypothesis. Using PubMed, research articles were studied to identify important information. For the Introduction, both secondary and primary articles were used without a limitation on publication date. For the Results section, only primary articles were used which had to have been published no earlier than 2006. The Results section of this review helped to support the hypothesis that edaravone is effective at managing ALS. The most pivotal efficacy endpoint, the change in the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Functional Rating Scale Revised score, was positively influenced by edaravone over the placebo. This was shown to be statistically significant by use of analysis of variance, amongst other statistical tests. Secondary endpoints such as forced vital capacity and pinch strength were also analyzed, showing similar favorable results. From the clinical trials analyzed in this review, it is concluded that edaravone is sufficient in treating ALS. Edaravone is limited to a target population which could prove to be a problem. Future studies should explore this issue in hopes of expanding the treatment population of edaravone. J Neurol Res. 2020;10(5):150-159 doi: https://doi.org/10.14740/jnr589