Cumbersome security procedures, rising airfares, and shrinking legroom have made commercial air travel difficult enough these days — even for healthy passengers. Imagine how much harder it is for patients with rare diseases who must get to doctors’ appointments or clinical trials that are hundreds of miles away from home.
PALS Uplifts the Spirits of Rare-Disease Patients by Offering Free Flights
Awareness Breeds Compassion. Compassion Drives Enhanced Funding. Funding Generates Heightened Innovative Intervention Ideas. It all starts with awareness. May is ALS Awareness Month. It is not a coincidence that I chose three words beginning with the letter “I.” I believe that a single measure of awareness yields…
Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) taken from the bone marrow of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) show an ability to control inflammation much like that seen in healthy people, but they respond differently and can be influenced by nearby pro-inflammatory molecules called cytokines, a…
Accumulation of TDP-43 protein is known to drive neurodegeneration associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Now, researchers have found that targeting the structure of TDP-43 and blocking its normal activity can halt the death of nerve cells linked to TDP-43 accumulation in ALS and FTD models. The…
Sometimes we need a nudge to help us get over a mental funk and back into the swing of life. My nudge came from a pair of white ankle-foot orthoses (AFO) with whom I had been having a love-hate relationship. Love ’em or hate ’em, they did end up becoming an…
News
Studying Epigenetic Changes Could Lead to New ALS Treatments and Biomarkers, Researchers Suggest
A specific type of genetic alteration — known as epigenetic changes — observed in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) may lead to novel treatments and diagnostic tools, according to a review study. The study, “Epigenetics in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: a role for histone post-translational modifications…
News
New Prognosis Model Predicts Risk of Respiratory Insufficiency or Death in ALS Patients, Study Says
Scientists created a new prognosis model to predict the risk of respiratory insufficiency or death within six months of follow-up in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The study, “Development of a prognostic model of respiratory insufficiency or death in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,” was published in the…
On June 21, bicyclists will set out to make a three-day, 270-mile journey to raise funds for the ALS Therapy Development Institute. The Tri-State Trek expedition begins at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, and ends in Greenwich, Connecticut. Proceeds go to the institute to advance its research into…
With an estimated 1.37 billion inhabitants, India will likely surpass China in five years as the world’s most populous country. That also means it will have more rare-disease patients than any nation. It already has more than twice as many as the 28-member European Union. Harsha K. Rajasimha, a genomics…
Columns
Breaking Even with ALS
A zero-sum game is a situation in which the accumulation of gain is accompanied by a sum of loss of equal value. The net result is always zero. From the get-go, ALS seeks to make that outcome an impossibility. It strives to force a plunging and irreversible deficit. In the…
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