Abstract
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is rare in children and the efficacy and safety of interferon beta 1b (IFN-β 1b) treatment inchildhood MS has not yet been established. We started to treat a boy who suffered from relapsing remitting MS with IFN-β 1b at8.5 years of age, because he had severe neurological disability in consequence of frequent relapses and incomplete remission. After initiating IFN-β 1b treatment, his clinical course moved to secondary progressive (SP) MS, and he demonstrated poor improvement in degenerative progression and his disability continued to worsen. We could speculate that IFN-β 1b was not effective regarding the degenerative component of childhood MS as in that of adult MS. SPMS is extremely rare in children, and this case would provide a very important implication to predict the tolerability of IFN-β 1b treatment depending on the type of clinical course in childhood MS.
