Being underweight when they start supported feeding puts patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at risk for poor outcomes at later stages of the disease, an Italian study has found. The study, “Nutritional prognostic factors for survival in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients undergone percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy placement,”…

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is characterized by specific changes in brain activity and connectivity, which are associated with motor and cognitive symptoms, an international research team has found. Therefore, measuring the impairment of motor and cognitive networks can be a novel ALS biomarker to evaluate disease progression in clinical trials,…

Noninvasive ventilation (NIV) can be ineffective in preventing episodes of upper airway obstruction in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients, likely because of unstable breathing control and poorly working bulbar motor neurons — those needed for swallowing, speaking and chewing — in these people, a study suggests.

More than 50% of the cases of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease are linked with a genetic cause, and first-degree relatives of an ALS member — especially daughters of ALS mothers — show the highest risk to inherit it, according to an Irish population-based study. The study “Lifetime Risk…

Researchers identified small-molecule compounds that help to prevent the build-up of stress-induced clumps of TDP-43 protein, a hallmark of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). These findings, although preliminary, may lead to new therapies for ALS. The work “Small-Molecule Modulation of TDP-43 Recruitment to Stress Granules Prevents Persistent TDP-43 Accumulation in…

A new patient-reported way of measuring shortness of breath in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), called the Dyspnea-ALS-Scale or DALS-15, can help doctors identify people who would benefit from noninvasive ventilation, even when their lung function and blood gas tests do not indicate it. DALS-15 also can be…

Scientist Jingsong Zhou, PhD, has received a $2.88-million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study how amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) affects multiple organs beyond the central nervous system (CNS). “We are ultimately working to find some potential therapeutic means to treat the disease with a…

Vitamin D supplementation can help overcome low levels of the vitamin often detected in people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Still, such an alternative therapeutic approach has no meaningful clinical effect on progression of ALS-associated motor symptoms, a study suggests. The study, “…

Researchers doing early-stage investigation into potential new ways to halt neuron death seen in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) have received a grant from the Alabama Power Foundation. Rita Cowell, PhD, a researcher at Southern Research’s Drug Discovery division, and her team have identified certain compounds that in lab…

AB Science has optimized the design of a Phase 3 confirmatory study for mastinib, its oral treatment for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), to avoid any possibility of bias. The optimized protocol for the study (NCT03127267), not yet recruiting, was validated by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Although AB…