Disease-Modifying Treatment for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis – A Review on Edaravone

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive, incurable neurodegenerative disease. There are non-pharmacological treatment options, such as supportive care, which help improve patients’ quality of life. Among disease-modifying pharmacological therapies, very few medications with an established level of evidence are found. One of them is edaravone (EDA). This integrative review was based on the selection of articles on the search platforms PubMed and Biblioteca Virtual em Saúde/Virtual Health Library. It included articles published between 2022 and 2023, which studied evidence on edaravone in the modifying treatment for ALS. Studies carried out in humans, which administered the drug intravenously or orally, were selected, excluding articles that modified the edaravone (EDA) molecule. The objective is to discuss current and available findings in the literature about the relationship between the use of edaravone and the functional deterioration of patients with ALS.

Keywords: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Edaravone, Disease-Modifying Treatment.