Copaxone vs Beta Interferon - Meta-Analysis

[SuzE-Q]

Back when I was on Copaxone I found a Cochrane study that ranked it lower in effectiveness than the interferons. That was the only place where I found this information.

In the years since, though, I've found a few other articles that state that--although it's apparently not a fact that the people at Teva (makers of Copaxone) want spread around.

Yes, I remember the Cochrane group indicating that copaxone was no better than placebo.

And we also know that it was tried, then shelved for decades because of poor efficacy. Until the interferons came about with low efficacy too, so Teva revived copaxone.

That's why I like Cochrane's reviews, they include additional independent studies as well, and the group of participants becomes much larger when aggregating all studies together. They also remove those with questionable study designs.

Cochrane is independent, and I trust their results above all others. Meta-analysis lets us look at all results combined to give a bigger picture, while removing those that have some flaws to them that we might have gotten excited about without realizing their weaknesses.