Long after ALS took my husband’s life, his legacy endures

A wearable robotic device called the Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL) can improve walking ability in people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and it may also help to preserve quality of life for patients, a new study from Japan shows. Notably, however, findings suggest that walking improvements with the…

It may be possible to diagnose amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in part by measuring the amounts of proteins in the tears of a person thought to have the progressive neurological disease. That’s according to a new study from Germany that found that quantifying levels of chitinases, a family of…

In more than 16 years of living with my husband Todd’s ALS, I’ve fought a lot of battles, and I’ve won a few. When Todd was prescribed at-home physical therapy, he was also eligible for home health aides to assist with showering. I pressed the agency to give…

Lily Sander will never forget what it was like to meet other people with neuromuscular diseases the first time she attended Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) Summer Camp. Living with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, Sander had met only one or two other people with neuromuscular diseases in her city. She was…

Specialized multidisciplinary care was associated with longer survival in people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a study found. The benefit was particularly notable among people with limb-onset, or spinal-onset, ALS, whose symptoms typically begin in the limbs. Median survival from symptom onset without invasive ventilation was 44 months with…

An artificial intelligence (AI) tool called Capsule Networks can distinguish people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) from unaffected individuals, with predictive performance comparable to testing for major known ALS genes, according to a study. The large international research collaboration, which used data from more than 47,000 people across 13…

Delivering gentle electrical stimulation to the spinal cord can reduce the buildup of toxic TDP-43 protein clumps in a mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), according to a new study. The specific type of stimulation used in the study is known as multisite direct current stimulation (DCS). The…

The Problem: Why Current Treatments Fall Short Neurodegeneration—including ALS and frontotemporal dementia (FTD)—happens when nerve cells die faster than the body can protect them. Most current ALS medicines slow this loss a little, but they don’t stop it. And for many people with ALS or FTD, available options are limited…

A novel treatment for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) caused by mutations in a specific gene called CHCHD10 showed promise for slowing disease progression in a clinical trial that tested the therapy in a single individual, as reported in a new study. “I didn’t think I would see this kind of…