OBJECTIVES: Non-compliance in drug therapy is considered a significant source of waste in health care systems. For treatment of multiple sclerosis, a new generation of high-cost disease modifying therapies (DMT) have come to market in the last decade. Besides offering new active ingredients and thus increased treatment options, the mode of administration of these DMT has altered from injection to oral administration. In this study, we analyze the impact of innovation in DMT on medication persistence and adherence in multiple sclerosis patients in Germany. METHODS: We used data from data from over 2 million patients. We assessed the likelihood to adhere to (medicines possession ratio >0.8) and discontinue (a gap occurs in medication supply in the range of one-fold duration of the previous prescription) by the type of drug used (innovation vs. standard therapy). We estimated a Bayesian logistic regression model, assuming a Bernoulli distribution as prior for the likelihood to discontinue/adhere and normal distribution as prior of the parameter estimates. We controlled for dosage frequency, treatment complexity and socioeconomic status (age, gender, income, insurance status). We accounted for switching behavior from standard to innovation. RESULTS: