Reading Time: 10 minutes “The annals of ALS clinical trials is strewn with failed studies. Only two out of more than 70 clinical trials have been positive, and even these showed only very modest benefit. Is this dismal record strictly due to the extraordinary complexity of neurodegenerative disease in general, and ALS in particular? Or is it due to…
Reading Time: 3 minutes This blog is part of the ‘Highlights from Glasgow’ collection of articles, where you can read about the content of some of the talks and posters presented at the 29th International Symposium on ALS/MND. Around the globe, teams are working to find tissue biomarkers for MND and there some promising candidates coming through, some of…
Reading Time: 7 minutes In the last decade, the MND Association has invested millions in research within the UK and across the world. We are a leader in the funding and promotion of cutting-edge MND research and, with over 30 years experience of identifying the most promising projects, we only fund and support scientific and medical research of the…
Reading Time: 3 minutes It has been almost a year since we announced that AMBRoSIA (A Multicentre Biomarker Resource Strategy In ALS) had begun to recruit participants (read the Autumn 2017 edition of Thumbprint). AMBRoSIA is the biggest project that the MND Association has ever funded and recruitment occurs at three sites throughout the UK (Sheffield, headed by Prof…
Reading Time: 8 minutes Following on from our previous catch-up blog on clinical management talks presented at the Symposium, here is a continuation that looks at talks focusing on treatment therapies and causes of MND. RNA Binding & Transport RNA is the lesser-known ‘cousin’ of DNA – it contains copies of genetic instructions sent out from the nucleus –…
Reading Time: 3 minutes The AMBRoSIA (A Multicentre Biomarker Resource Strategy In ALS) project is our biggest, most ambitious research undertaking to date. The project funding began in August, closely followed by being the focus of this month’s ‘Make Your Mark’ fundraising appeal. Here we explain more about what this flagship project is all about.
Reading Time: 2 minutes Although conventional brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans are often normal in people with MND, more sophisticated MRI techniques have shown changes in the structure of their brains as the disease progresses. A limitation of even the most recent MRI techniques is that they can only provide a snapshot of the brain at a single…
Reading Time: 2 minutes What are fasciculations? When motor neurones in the spinal cord become damaged this makes them electrically unstable, meaning they spontaneously discharge electrical impulses that cause small groups of muscles to contract. These contractions, known as fasciculations, are a common symptom of MND. Research suggests that they might be a good marker of motor neurone health.…
Reading Time: 3 minutes When diagnosing MND, it is important to look at the activity and impact of the motor neurones themselves – is the electrical message being carried down the nerve properly, and is it reaching the end of the nerve in the muscle? Malfunctions in the electrical activity at the muscle end of the nerve cell result…
Reading Time: 2 minutes There is a critical need to find a biomarker for MND to speed up diagnosis, monitor disease progression and improve clinical trials. A biomarker is a biological change that can be detected in a person to signal that they have MND, and that can be measured over time to monitor how the disease is progressing.…
