unded by The ALS Association, NeuroBANK™ is the patient-centric platform for clinical research for numerous Association programs developed by the Neurological Clinical Research Institute (NCRI) at Massachusetts General Hospital. The platform received the Best Practices Award for Personalized & Translational Medicine at the 2018 Bio-IT World Conference and Expo in Boston earlier this month.
My dad chose to live with his disease, even though we lost him a little each day. He traveled, he loved, he laughed, he lived. I can honestly say (with many tears) he lived 100 years in his 59.
I encountered my first ALS reversal in July 2011, more than a decade into my career in ALS, while leading an ALSUntangled review of Dean Kraft, an energy healer. On Kraft’s website was a video about a person named Nelda Buss, who was reported to have been diagnosed with ALS at a top hospital and progressed to where she had lost nearly all movement and was near death. After two years of Kraft’s treatments, she was said to have recovered most or all of her motor function. I was skeptical.
While thinking about what I could do that would be a special and fun fundraiser, I noticed a famous drag queen asking for donations to a nonprofit on her social media and I thought “How do I get her to do that for The ALS Association?”
Five years ago, we challenged our friends and family to dump buckets full of ice over their heads to raise awareness and funds for ALS. The rest is history. This year, we have a new message: Challenge Me.
Epidemiology is the study of factors that influence the frequency and distribution of disease, injury and other health-related events and their causes in a defined human population. These studies are done to establish programs that prevent and control the development and spread of disease and injury.
While recent years have brought a wealth of new scientific understanding regarding the physiology of ALS, there is still some mystery and misinformation surrounding the disease.
Heidi Tarr Henson, diagnosed with ALS last spring, shares thoughts about her personal journey living with the disease, how she’s managing her personal changes in mobility and how she strives to just live in the moment.