Research, support and hope for spinal muscular atrophy

If you know PatientsLikeMe, you know that neurological conditions take us all the way back to our beginning. Stephen Heywood, the brother of our founders Ben and Jamie, was diagnosed with ALS back in 1998 at age 29. Today, almost ten years after PatientsLikeMe was created, thousands of members living with ALS and other neurological… Continue reading Research, support and hope for spinal muscular atrophy

A new gene for ALS: What sharing your genetics could mean for research

In today’s issue of the journal Science two papers describe the discovery of a new gene for ALS (you can read the abstracts here and here). Around 90% of ALS cases are sporadic, i.e. we don’t know what causes them, but for 5-10% of patients the disease runs in their family (known as familial ALS,… Continue reading A new gene for ALS: What sharing your genetics could mean for research

ALS Symposium 2008: New features for ALS patients

This blog post is the second in a series from our attendance at the 19th International Symposium on ALS/MND in Birmingham UK in November 2008. When PatientsLikeMe attended the previous ALS/MND Symposium in Toronto Canada in December 2007, I was given a platform presentation to show the assembled clinicians, scientists and researchers what we had… Continue reading ALS Symposium 2008: New features for ALS patients