This retrospective analysis included MS patients initiating DRF between 04-Dec-2019 through 03-Apr-2020. Patients were followed until data extraction on 31-Aug-2020. Patients were excluded if their treatment status could not be determined (e.g., patients whose DRF prescription was transferred to a different pharmacy). Endpoints included persistence (overall proportion of patients remaining on therapy), discontinuation rate due to GI AEs, and adherence measured by proportion of days covered (PDC). GI AEs included: (a) GI-related AEs that occurred at any time or (b) any unknown AE that lacked details regarding the nature of event if the unknown AE occurred ≤90 days after DRF initiation.

Overall, 160 MS patients were included. Mean age was 50.6 years; 80.6% were female. Twenty-six (16.3%) patients had prior DMF treatment. At the time of analysis, 142 (88.8%) patients remained persistent to DRF (median treatment duration of 7.6 months). Six (3.8%) patients discontinued due to GI AEs. Mean PDC was 91.4%. In the DMF-to-DRF subgroup, 24/26 (92.3%) remained persistent on DRF; 1 patient (3.8%) discontinued DRF due to a GI AE.

In this real-world analysis of DRF-treated patients, overall persistence was high, discontinuation rate due to GI AEs was low, and patients were highly adherent to therapy, consistent with expectations based on clinical trials. Consistent results were observed in the DMF-to-DRF switch subgroup.