Data Visualizations

This data visualization presents a network map of the collaborations among the 1253 authors of 263 research papers that reported results of clinical trials in progressive forms of multiple sclerosis between January 1983 and September 2015.

This interactive timeline presents the key milestones for the clinical development of all 12 compounds currently approved in the US or Europe for treating MS.

Understanding and analyzing the design of past clinical trials is a key factor in planning future trials. This visualization details the design of 88 clinical trials with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reports published between 1993 and 2014. It makes it easy to see which of five key measurements were reported in each trial and when during the course of that trial those measurements were made.

If you follow research on multiple sclerosis, you’ve seen one of those awful slides showing the complex immune pathways involved in MS, overloaded with arrows, shapes, and text. Those slides are often projected at the beginning of the talk, sometimes very quickly and sometimes in very small type, specifically to make the point that the immunopathogenesis is so complex that there’s no point even in attempting to follow all the details. The speaker will often make a joke about how bewildering it all is, and the audience often laughs. Though the immunopathogenesis of MS is knotty, it is not beyond the ken of mere mortals. In this video Dr. Suhayl Dhib-Jalbut takes us step by step through those pathways, illuminating details that may formerly have been obscure.

This visualization demonstrates a mystery related to relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS). For some unknown reason, the annualized relapse rates (ARRs) among RRMS patients in the placebo arms of phase 3 trials have decreased substantially over the last two decades. In the 1990s ARRs tended to be above 1.0, but more recently ARRs have been 0.5 and below.