'I feel like I've regressed 10 or 15 years since switching'

An MS patient says her life is 'crumbling' after she was given a cheaper version of a drug under an NHS cost-cutting drive

- HOLLY EVANS

A woman with multiple sclerosis (MS) says she has been left with debilitating symptoms after the NHS switched her to a cheaper drug. Julie Cowdrill is among scores of MS patients who say they have suffered a regression in their condition after being switched from a drug called Tysabri to one called Tyruko, with complaints that a “cost-cutting exercise” is coming at the expense of their health.

NHS England is hoping to save £1bn over the next five years by switching to biosimilar drugs – medicines that have been shown not to be clinically different from the original drug, but are made far more cheaply. However, in Ms Cowdrill’s case, she has been left suffering from headaches and extreme fatigue, and has experienced worsenening mobility since she started taking the drug in December 2024.

“Myself and many others have said that it feels like we’ve regressed 10 or 15 years after all the work we’ve done to get better. It’s like the rug has been pulled from under you – it’s dreadful,” she told The Independent.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said it is “aware” that some patients have experienced side effects, but that a rigorous assessment has “demonstrated no clinically meaningful differences” between the drugs.

Ms Cowdrill first noticed her body was behaving unusually in 2006 when she was in her early twenties, after she suffered nerve damage in her eye. By 2009, at the age of just 28, she began to notice “literally everything” was going wrong with her health, and she was diagnosed with relapsing-remitting MS.