About the Authors

Rotem Orbach

Contributed equally to this work with: Rotem Orbach, Zhenming Zhao

Affiliations MS Clinical Development Group, Biogen Idec, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America, Multiple Sclerosis Center at Sheba Medical Center, Tel-Hashomer, Israel

Zhenming Zhao

Contributed equally to this work with: Rotem Orbach, Zhenming Zhao

Affiliation Biostatistics, Biogen Idec, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America

Yong-Cheng Wang

Affiliation Biostatistics, Biogen Idec, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America

Gilmore O’Neill

Affiliation MS Clinical Development Group, Biogen Idec, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America

Diego Cadavid

diego.cadavid@biogenidec.com

Affiliation MS Clinical Development Group, Biogen Idec, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America

Competing Interests

GO and DC are full time paid employees and own stock and/or stock options in Biogen Idec. JZ and YCW were full time paid employees of Biogen Idec. RO was a paid Intern at Biogen Idec. Biogen Idec was the sponsor of the IMPACT study and together with Genentech (now a subsidiary of the Roche group) of the OLYMPUS study. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors’ adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: RO ZZ YCW GO DC. Performed the experiments: RO ZZ DC. Analyzed the data: RO ZZ DC. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: YCW GO. Wrote the paper: RO ZZ DC.