Reading Time: 3 minutes Researchers from University College London led by Dr Pietro Fratta and Dr John Thornton found that muscle imaging can help distinguish Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) from Kennedy’s Disease based on the way specific muscle groups deteriorate in each condition. The method can also help assess the severity of the disease. ALS is a rapidly progressing…
Reading Time: 4 minutes Recently published results from the open-label Lighthouse trial investigating safety of the drug Triumeq in people with MND revealed the treatment was safe and ready to progress to a larger Phase 3 clinical trial. The trial was held in Australia and recruited 40 people with MND who all received the active drug; this was because…
Reading Time: 4 minutes After its successful premiere in 2017, the University of Oxford organised another meeting of people affected by inherited MND, called ‘Families for the Treatment of Hereditary MND (FaTHoM)’. This turned out to be yet another excellent day where MND clinicians-researchers presented on topics such as genetics of MND, genetic testing and gene therapies. Below you…
Reading Time: 4 minutes Exploring the link between our guts and our general health is becoming increasingly popular. Studies of people with various physical and mental health conditions suggest there may be an important link that has not yet been explored in MND. Researchers are now looking closely into the association between our gut microbiome and our vulnerability to…
Reading Time: 3 minutes A recent press release by the pharmaceutical company Biogen reported preliminary results from an ongoing clinical trial investigating a form of precision therapy in people with SOD1-related MND. This drug, known as tofersen, is now in the final stages of Phase 1/2 testing in centres across the world, including Sheffield in the UK. Tofersen is…
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: 5 minutes Findings from the largest biomarker study of people with Kennedy’s Disease, published in the journal Neurology, found a predictive biomarker to help in differential diagnosis and tracking clinical progression. Led by Dr Pietro Fratta from University College London, the research team highlighted the importance of markers of muscle mass rather than neuronal damage in Kennedy’s…
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. In the Clinical trials and trial design (4B) session we heard from two speakers looking at ways to improve current design…
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. In the Epidemiology session (5C), several talks focused on the risk associated with various lifetime events, and the demographics of people…
Reading Time: 3 minutes Motor Neurone Disease (MND), as the name suggests, is known as a disease of motor neurons, a specific type of neurons that co-ordinate our voluntary movement, leading to loss of the ability to move, speak and breathe. And perhaps because the main focus often falls on the rapidly-progressing physical symptoms and their management, the way…
