With Clinical Trial Criteria, We’re Stuck on the Outside, Looking In

“Have you ever participated in clinical trials?” That’s a common question among ALS patients. What’s my standard answer? “It’s complicated. I’m participating in several studies, but even though I’d like to, I haven’t been in any clinical trials. I’m excluded because I’ve had ALS for too many years.” ‘What? Tell…

Changes to a critical structure within the cell nucleus of spinal nerve cells — the nucleolus — preceded the appearance of other disease markers in people with either familial or sporadic forms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a study has discovered. …

Many diseases have their own awareness color — breast cancer is pink, muscular dystrophy is green, and AIDS is red, for example — but what’s the significance of pink, green, blue, and purple lights side-by-side? These are the colors most often used to represent Rare Disease Day. This…

Under an agreement with the University of Kansas, PharmaTher has gained exclusive worldwide rights to develop and possibly commercialize ketamine as a therapy for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). “We are pleased to have added the [ALS] program to our already impressive development pipeline…

Injecting a specific type of stem cells into the bloodstream was able to reduce muscle shrinkage and promote motor neuron survival in a mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a study found. According to investigators, the findings indicate these stem cells, known as multi-lineage differentiating stress enduring (Muse)…

“I’m glad I got the chance to miss you,” I told my husband, Todd, when I got home after a day trip skiing with our children last week. Since Todd has ALS and I am his caregiver, we rarely spend time apart. Now that he is paralyzed, we don’t…

The small difference in treatment responses among amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients receiving NurOwn versus a placebo in a recent clinical trial likely was due to chance, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced in a press release. Along with slightly more deaths in the NurOwn…

PrimeC is safe and well-tolerated for the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and showed signs of slowing disease progression in patients, findings from a recently-completed Phase 2a study show. All 15 participants in the NST002 clinical trial (NCT04165850) have chosen to…

Last week, I stepped onto my soapbox (mine has special safety handrails) and voiced my opinion about an issue that’s been bugging me for several years. It’s a problem I share with about 7.5 million other people who have trouble using their voices and cannot get voice-activated devices to…

For the first time, a compound was able to restore the health of diseased upper motor neurons — nerve cells that carry voluntary movement signals from the brain to the spinal cord — in the brain of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) mouse models, a study…