Reading Time: 5 minutes Clinical trials determine if potential treatments are safe and aim to prove beyond reasonable doubt whether a drug is beneficial. They are therefore the gold standard of treatment research. More information on the different types of clinical trial can be found on our website and in our information sheet on the topic. This year the…
Reading Time: 3 minutes Bar a few bacteria usually found hitching a ride on our dental plaque and digestive system, every living cell in the human body needs oxygen. Some cells need more oxygen that others, dependent on much energy they need to produce to function. Neurones are particularly active cells (the brain uses a fifth of all the…
Reading Time: 3 minutes Mechanical ventilation for people with motor neurone disease (MND) is a sensitive and little discussed topic. Yesterday’s respiratory management session of the International Symposium on ALS/ MND began with several interesting and thought provoking presentations on the subject. Pia Dryer from Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark presented the results of a review of their respiratory service…
Reading Time: 5 minutes Different ways to support breathing were the main focus of the second clinical session on day two of the Symposium. Researchers from two MND Association funded studies presented their work looking at diaphragm pacing and also the withdrawal of ventilation support. Diaphragm pacing The NeuRx diaphragm pacing system (DPS) is a device developed to aid…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Karen Pearce, the MND Association’s Director of Care, blogs about presenting the Association’s wheelchair project at the Allied Professionals Forum, which happened prior to the International Symposium on ALS/MND. At the Allied Professionals Forum I had the opportunity to present our wheelchair project, particularly looking at anticipating future needs and the powered neuro wheelchair. The…
Reading Time: 3 minutes Every day there are two sets of talks going on at the same time during the International Symposium. On Saturday morning there was a symmetry to what was being discussed in these parallel sessions. Both were talking about the inherited form of motor neurone disease (MND). One as reported from Sara’s blog was from the…
Reading Time: 4 minutes A huge ‘atlas’ mapping the locations of motor neurone disease (MND) causing mutations within the genetic code has been collated. This has followed years of genetic analysis and sequencing of the DNA of people with MND, and their family members. The people who have given their time and DNA have played a hugely important part…
Reading Time: 2 minutes It wouldn’t be the Symposium without a new gene discovery. Although technology has allowed incredible advances in the gene-hunting field, this is countered by the fact that as more and more familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (FALS) genes are found, it makes the search for the remaining unknown genes harder This is in part due to…
Reading Time: 3 minutes With motor neurone disease (MND), the muscle weakness almost always starts in a single part of the body, with the weakness then spreading to other muscles in an orderly fashion. Neurologists are usually quite good at predicting which muscles will be affected next, slightly less so at predicting when this will happen. The physical changes…
Reading Time: 3 minutes Yesterday at the International Symposium on ALS/MND Prof Ammar Al-Chalabi (Director of King’s Care Centre and Professor of Complex Genetics at King’s College London) cautioned the motor neurone disease (MND) research community about the confusing way we describe this disease we are all fighting. He started his talk by showing a standard definition of what MND…
