The 12th International Congress for Human Genetics (ICHG) was a fantastic learning experience with 7,200 geneticists, doctors and researchers in attendance – making it the largest ICHG ever. The talks were of the highest quality, and the latest genetics research was presented and discussed. It was an honor to give one of these presentations, since only 8% of those who applied were awarded the opportunity.
That brings me to the main purpose of this blog post: A big THANK YOU to the members of PatientsLikeMe.Your data made our presentation possible.I spoke about the ALS pilot program for genetics entry and search functionality, which allows ALS patients to enter their causative genetic mutations (such as SOD1 A4V, SOD1 D90A and VAPB P56S)and find others with the same genetics.It was a groundbreaking project, and we hope to implement it site-wide in the near future.
I also presented some of the key results from our recent survey on genetic testing:
16% of you have had some form of genetic testing.
Of those who have been tested, 31% have had a direct-to-consumer genetic test.
If cost were NOT a consideration, 83% of you would be at least moderately interested in getting a comprehensive personal genetic test.
68% of you said you would be at least moderately interested in finding others with the same genetics as you.
Thanks again for your participation in the survey, for being members of PatientsLikeMe and for sharing in our research efforts.I hope that next year I’ll be presenting PatientsLikeMe’s site-wide genetics functionality.
Afterwards, PatientsLikeMe’sAaron Fleishmansat down with Dr. Brownstein to learn more about how the ICHG award is selected as well as how it spotlights PatientsLikeMe’s potential as a platform for genetic discovery.Listen in below to hear what Dr. Brownstein had to say about how your genetics can affect your condition – from how you metabolize drugs to how your disease will progress.
In response to the Wall Street Journal article published last week, we’ve had a lot of great discussions about the role of honesty and transparency. Transparency is about you - members of the PatientsLikeMe community - knowing how we make money and what we do with the data you’ve entrusted to each other and PatientsLikeMe.
To start, the characterization as villain is nicely hyperbolic for a headline, but inaccurate. Villains are dishonest. As a company, we strive to be honest and transparent - both are key parts of our Core Values as an organization. To that end, let us dig in on a few of your recent follow-up questions:
Does PatientsLikeMe sell our identifying data (like name, photo, bio, etc.)?
No. We’ve asked for a correction in the Internet Evolution article because their statement about scraping the names you use to sign up for the site is incorrect. In the BNET article, the author cited our Privacy Policy, which indicates what data patient members can share on their health profiles at PatientsLikeMe. This is not the same as the data we sell. In addition to linking our partners site right off our homepage (where we list out the products sold to partners), we also call out “how we make money” on the front page. Part of this FAQ was cited, but the very important point about “personally identifiable information” is below:
How does PatientsLikeMe make money? We take the information patients share about their experience with the disease, and sell it in a de-identified, aggregated and individual format to our partners (i.e., companies that are developing or selling products to patients). These products may include drugs, devices, equipment, insurance, and medical services. We do not rent, sell or share personally identifiable information for marketing purposes or without explicit consent. Because we believe in transparency, we tell our members exactly what we do and do not do with their data. (Read more)
Is this a “privacy scandal”? To us, it’s not a discussion about whether or not health information should be private. (Don’t get us wrong - that’s an important discussion too, but we’re pretty clear on where we stand on that - see our Openness Philosophy). The issue here is that Nielsen was not given consent of the patients, nor PatientsLikeMe, to scrape information from our site. As we’ve said before, we believe this scraping incident was a violation of our User Agreement and a violation of patients’ trust.
Isn’t PatientsLikeMe doing the same thing as Nielsen? In addition to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy, we also have a moral obligation to our communities to do the right thing. In this case it means: 1) having this dialogue openly and honestly; 2) being selective about the projects we work on and our partners; and 3) contractually obligating our partners not to ‘re-identify’ our patients with our data or other data (which would mean a pharma company would be taking on liability using a service like PeekYou in conjunction with PatientsLikeMe data).
Our site wouldn’t exist if we had to “persuade” you, the patient, to share your data. Many of you find value in sharing; value in that level of openness. What you should expect in return is a level of transparency about what we will and won’t do with your information. We hope we do a good job of providing that transparency. What do you think?
Earlier this year, the University of Arizona hosted a unique meeting for scientists, policy makers, and law experts to explore the legal, ethical, and policy implications of personalized medicine. The opening keynote was by Dr. Lee Hartwell, 2001 Nobel Prize recipient in Medicine / Physiology and Director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and he invited the audience to consider the role of patients in research. He stated that there was an “increasingly important role for patients in this process” and that scientists currently “rely on trial data, totally insufficient to the problem.” Dr. Hartwell also stated that “when you talk to patients, they want to make a contribution. They would like their medical info made useful to other people. The only thing that keeps them from doing so is the threat of losing their life insurance or losing their job.” The views of pioneers such as Dr. Hartwell are important in medicine and it was energizing to hear such a well regarded figure espousing a philosophy with which we so strongly agree.
The lunchtime speaker was David Ewing Duncan, a journalist whose recent book “Experimental Man” detailed his journey to try and undergo every medical test available to science (including genetics, brain scans, and lab measures) in order to find out more about his health risks and how to live the best life possible. As the cost of genetic sequencing comes down to the mythical “$1,000 genome,” we may one day all take the same journey as Duncan to explore how much of our health outcomes are determined by data accessible to us right now. There will undoubtedly be ethical and moral conundrums along the way as genetic science moves from the specialist clinic to all of us as consumers, but ultimately understanding your own DNA is as much of a right as being able to look in the mirror.
Moving from genotype to phenotype, I gave a presentation in the afternoon about our work at PatientsLikeMe. More specifically, I focused on how our platform allow patients with serious medical conditions to find out where they stand in the context of other patients like them, and how systems like ours might one day be able to help guide them to the most effective treatments to improve their outcomes. Highlights from my presentation are now on our YouTube page.
Four years ago this Spring, PatientsLikeMe launched the ALS community with very specific goals in mind - to help patients like you take control of your disease, share and learn from one another, have a voice in real-world research and inform the companies that make your drugs and can improve your care. Together, we have come so far as a community in making those goals, those dreams happen. Today, to close out ALS Awareness Month, we want to honor that journey by highlighting some of the milestones you as a community have achieved.
As many of you know, the journey started when PatientsLikeMe was inspired by Stephen Heywood, a young man diagnosed with ALS when he was only 29 years old. His brothers Jamie and Ben, and long-time friend Jeff Cole, built PatientsLikeMe and its flagship ALS community to help Stephen and other patients like him. After four years since launching the ALS community, more than 4,500 of you - our PALS - are still sharing your data and experiences to help others. Along the way, we’ve lost some of our friends, including Stephen, but their contributions live on in the data they’ve shared with us to help further the understanding of this disease. Jamie recently said it this way: “the desire is that this disease should no longer kill, but we do our best to help people live with it today.”
Thank you for living with it today and sharing those experiences with your fellow PALS, industry, researchers…all of us. You are truly making a difference.
Spring 2006: The ALS community launches!
February 2007: PatientsLikeMe wins its first scientific award for a poster describing our work in ALS at the British Neuropsychiatry Association AGM in London, England.
July 2007: Your contributions lead to PatientsLikeMe’s first scientific discovery. PatientsLikeMe publishes a paper in Acta Psychiatica Scandinavica showing that some PALS experience uncontrollable bouts of excessive yawning; an unusual symptom twice as common in the bulbar-onset form of the disease compared to those with a limb-onset.
December 2007: Your sharing of real-world experiences helps PatientsLikeMe make a big splash at the International ALS/MND Symposium in Toronto, Canada. The team gives its first platform presentation to show off the website, and your health data, to ALS researchers, scientists, and clinicians.
May 2008: Your voice in research is heard loud and clear. PatientsLikeMe publishes its first survey in the European Journal of Neurology, showing that while 90% of PALS were warned about physical symptoms of their condition, only 10% were warned about possible psychological consequences, and two-thirds wanted to be told.
November 2008: PatientsLikeMe’s Paul Wicks and Jamie Heywood once again attend the International ALS/MND Symposium to give an overview of the history of ALS online, and present our very first findings from the lithium study. Even though we were only presenting preliminary data, there was a lot of buzz about this new and interesting approach to conducting research - with you, the patient, in the driver’s seat. We also gave a few sneak-peeks at upcoming features for the site.
May 2009: In response to a request from one of our patients, Cathy Wolf, the PatientsLikeMe research team carried out a study to extend the scale, something we call the ALSFRS-EX (Extension), which helps capture functional changes in patients with advanced ALS.
August 2009: Thanks to you, PatientsLikeMe now has the largest dataset of patients with Primary Lateral Sclerosis (PLS) and Progressive Muscular Atrophy (PMA) online than ever recorded before. We shared this data back to the community through an upgrade to our ALS charts.
October 2009: The ALS community and all that you’ve shared is the focal point of Co-founder Jamie Heywood’s powerful talk at TEDMED, called “The Big Idea my Brother Inspired.” In the presentation, he describes the creation of the site, preliminary results of the lithium experiment and shows some of our most advanced tools still in development.
December 2009: The power of sharing your health data is highlighted in the PatientsLikeMe presentation at the 20th International ALS/MND Symposium in Berlin where the PatientsLikeMe research team unveiled our next round of analyses on the lithium study. The team also presents preliminary results of our genetics tool, and a commercial project exploring emotional lability in ALS, undertaken with our partners Avanir Pharmaecuticals (see “how we make money“).
January 2010: PatientsLikeMe rolls out new profile charts in the ALS community to help you, the patient, understand your own profile better and tell your story more effectively.
May 2010: This month we see the release of a study carried out in collaboration with our partners at the NEALS Consortium investigating some of the barriers to research participation that some of you may experience. Additionally, all your contributions to the lithium study have been collected and analyzed by now, and the PatientsLikeMe research team submits it for peer-review publication to a leading journal. Thanks to you and your peers, this final paper highlights the potential of new ways of collecting and analyzing data in ALS to advance clinical trials and find faster cures.
Posted by Lori Piscatelli Scanlon | December 31, 2009
As 2009 comes to an end, we want to take this opportunity to thank all of our members, partners and general fans for another great year. Here’s a recap of some of the exciting happenings at PatientsLikeMe these past 12 months. Wishing you all a Happy New Year!
Community Milestones
This year, the 15+ disease communities at PatientsLikeMe became an online home to more than 50,000 members. The fibromyalgia community was expanded this past fall to include patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, and we announced a new community scheduled to launch early next year for people with epilepsy. In addition to celebrating our communities’ awareness days and months within the site and right here on the blog (including Fibromyalgia Awareness Day, MS and PD Awareness Months, National HIV Testing Day and World AIDS Day), many of our members also participated on PatientsLikeMe teams in walk/run efforts to raise awareness and money in the name of their disease. Congrats to the 40+teams walking at events to support non-profit organizations like ALS Association, National MS Society, NAMI, Parkinson’s Alliance, APDA, and the MS Society of Canada. The real-time sharing and learning happening on PatientsLikeMe was also highlighted in the report series called The Patient Voice (starting with inpatient therapy for people with Mood conditions). Check out highlights from all these programs on these videos from the Fibromyalgia, Parkinson’s, Multiple Sclerosis and Mood communities.
“I find this site so beneficial in looking for the tools to cope with the disease. People post research and real-life patient experiences of current trials and treatments. Hope is a major focus of PLM and I encourage others to join. We are strong in numbers and we have a voice.”
“PLM is a wonderful way to express what and how to live with this disease. It has changed my life for the better, have met wonderful individuals and we have shared, cried and grown by reaching out and expressing from our hearts, have made wonderful friends and have learned so much.”
Throughout the year, the team has also shared insights via videos (like this series on the history of ALS or a recap of a study on the antidepressant Amitriptyline) and various presentations (such as an overview of our work at the at Eurordis AGM in Athens and updates on our lithium study at the International ALS/MND Symposium). In addition to working on the development of our new communities, the team took additional steps to incorporate genetics into the PatientsLikeMe platform. By participating in new partner studies (such as 23andMe and NEALS) and utilizing new product upgrades, including the launch of the Genetic Search Engine, patients are learning more about their condition and coming closer to answering the question: “Given my status, what is the best outcome I can expect to achieve, and how do I get there?”
Keep your eyes out for more to come in 2010 as our R&D team rolls out more insights and outcomes measurements (like the Quality of Life scale in HIV), more improvements to the PatientsLikeMe platform, and cutting edge research in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
The Business Side
As Ben said in a recent blog post, “we can’t have a business without you [the patient] and our communities can’t exist to help patients without a business.” Throughout the year, the PatientsLikeMe executive team traveled around the world to present to industry partners, researchers, healthcare professionals and government leaders about the power of real-world patient data-sharing. Here are some highlights from ‘09:
Government: Piloted in our MS community this year, PatientsLikeMe members now have the ability to voluntarily report adverse events directly to the FDA; in fact, Jamie recently presented about adverse event reporting at an open FDA hearing on the “Promotion of FDA-Regulated Medical Products Using the Internet and Social Media Tools.” PatientsLikeMe was also one of the collaborating organizations responsible for writing the Declaration of Health Data Rights and launching HealthDataRights.org this past June. Finally, Jamie testified before the National Committee for Health and Vital Statistics, and gave an exciting rapid-fire presentation on the future of medicine at the Gov 2.0 Summit.
Innovation: As a leader in Health 2.0, PatientsLikeMe executives are often asked to speak at various industry events. Check out photos of Ben speaking at The National Summit and stay tuned for videos from Jamie’s presentation at TEDMED and David’s presentation at Bil:Pil. You can also tune in to our live event tweets on the PatientsLikeMe Twitter account in 2010.
Media Highlights: PatientLikeMe members, data and executives were also featured in media mentions throughout 2009, including WIRED, Forbes, U.S. News & World Report, Fox Business Live, Newsweek, New York Times, as well as Seed magazine, Nature Biotechnology and Neurology Today.
Though documented as long ago as the early 1800s, medical breakthroughs in Parkinson’s disease research have been slow in coming. That’s why PatientsLikeMe continues to get involved in the research process. With our new genetics engine for Parkinson’s disease, patients now have a way to share information about their genetics and find others with the same genetics as them. As part of our commitment to supporting genetics discovery, PatientsLikeMe recently partnered with 23andMe, aiding them in their research effort to get 10,000 Parkinson’s patients for a groundbreaking research study.
Most of the time, people don’t know what causes their Parkinson’s disease. It could be due to genetic factors we haven’t identified yet, environmental exposures, or maybe even something else completely. However, there are some known genetic causes of Parkinson’s disease. Sometimes different genetic mutations have different disease characteristics, so there’s some benefit to knowing what mutation you may have. For example, different genetic mutations can result in an earlier or later onset for Parkinson’s disease, some have a milder or more severe disease course, and others have a higher or lower chance of dementia. Knowing your genetic status could help you plan ahead, especially if you have a strong family history of the disease.
The 23andMe kit tests for one genetic mutation that can cause Parkinson’s disease - LRRK2 G2019S. The chances of having this mutation vary with your ethnicity, and not everyone with the mutation will get Parkinson’s disease. However, some studies claim that LRRK2 G2019S is responsible for about 5-6% of all familial cases of Parkinson’s Disease and 1% of sporadic (randomly occurring) cases of Parkinson’s disease.
We are working to include as much meaningful genetics information in the PatientsLikeMe Parkinson’s community so that you can make the best decisions collaboratively. For those PatiensLikeMe Parkinson’s community members taking advantage of the 23andMe offer, we encourage you to upload your genetic information on your PatientsLikeMe profile so we can continue to expand our understanding of genetics and Parkinson’s in the context of individual patients. If you go to your 23andMe account and find that you have the LRRK2 G2019S mutation, you can add it to your PatientsLikeMe diagnosis history. Once you have entered your genetics to your profile, you will be “findable” by other “patients like you” with the same genetics. The PatientsLikeMe research team is excited about learning more about Parkinson’s with your help. Sharing information will help us all learn as much as we can about the disease.
Today, more than 3,600 people with ALS are sharing their health data and experiences with patients like them. Recently, we announced our new genetic search engine for ALS patients, designed to help members find others like them, right down to the molecular level. With 10% of all newly diagnosed ALS patients joining PatientsLikeMe, there are more and more people sharing their health information, including genetic data, to help learn about this disease.
Our research team’s geneticist Dr. Catherine Brownstein recently interviewed Samperio, one of the first members to enter in his genetics on PatientsLikeMe. Later this year, Catherine will be presenting the genetic data shared on PatientsLikeMe to the leading doctors, researchers and thought leaders in the industry to help us all learn more about ALS, and the genes affecting the condition.
Here’s what Samperio had to say about life with familial ALS (FALS) and hope for the future.
***
(Catherine) Thanks for agreeing to the interview! You recently joined PatientsLikeMe and revealed that you have a SOD1 genetic mutation, the cause of your familial ALS. When did it all start and how has this form of ALS affected you and your family?
(Samperio) My ALS is affecting my family [the same] as any other form of ALS. I stopped working, and my wife has to work for both of us. I never had the chance to play soccer or teach my 9-year old son to ride a bike, as I did with my previous sons.
I lived the same ALS story with my mother. She died when I was 18. It took her approximately 10 years, from beginning to end. My symptoms begin at age 40; my ankles were weak. So I was suspicious of ALS. A few years later, I had the DNA exam in Houston, TX and it came positive for FALS.
My biggest hope is my family, especially my wife. I know what a burden I am, since I lived that experience with my mother.
(Catherine) You previously mentioned that your doctor had never seen your genetic mutation before. How much do you know about your SOD1?
(Samperio) Almost nothing. The DNA exam was performed 6 years ago. The doctors never told me anything regarding my genetics.
I have never met anyone with FALS.
(Catherine) So now you’ve joined a site with people just like you — even people with the same genetic causes for ALS. What has been your experience on PatientsLikeMe?
(Samperio) By joining PLM, I have found so much comfort on all the daily interaction, reading all those people [with the same disease] who share the same interest as I do.
(Catherine) What is your hope for the future of ALS research?
(Samperio) As for the future of the ALS research, obviously to find a cure for this disease.
Despite some recent happenings in the news, we’re here to assure you that health 2.0 is still very much alive. Here’s our recent announcement about our new partnership with 23andMe.
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PatientsLikeMe, the first community-based personalized medicine platform for people with life-changing conditions, and 23andMe, the world’s leading personal genomics company, announce a partnership today to help people with Parkinson’s disease. PatientsLikeMe is teaming with 23andMe on its effort to recruit 10,000 people with Parkinson’s for a massive study of the disease, and give patients a way to learn more about their personal genetics.
“Today, technology is moving faster than the research establishment,” says James Heywood, co-founder and chairman of PatientsLikeMe. “We are excited to see what happens when you give patients the ability to see variations of their disease and compare it to their own, while enabling them to easily define their personal genomics.”
This month marks the 3-year anniversary of our flagship ALS community. While there have been so many exciting milestones we’ve reached in that time, we’re always looking at ways to bring new insight to this disease.
Today, we’re announcing the launch of our Genetics Search Engine for people with ALS. Imagine finding other patients just like you, down to the genetic level. Patients in our ALS community can now do that. (For patients who don’t see their genetic mutation right now, that’s alright. They can be the first with that genetic mutation to join our community and share information about the disease.)
What does sharing genetics mean for research? By capturing data on familial ALS patients’ known genetics (such as SOD1 A4V, SOD1 D90A, and VAPB P56S), we can learn more about the cause and effects of every kind of ALS and better our chances of advancing research and finding new treatments. Our goal in launching the Genetics Search Engine (and other upgrades like it) is to help patients find others just like them and enhance our understanding of the phenotype of each genetic mutation (i.e., different causes of ALS have faster or slower disease progression).
The Genetics Search Engine is a major step toward incorporating genetics for the PatientsLikeMe communities, and it’s an exciting one. Give it a try and let us know what you think…
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, FALS). Until today, there was only one major causative gene that we knew about, called SOD1, which accounted for 20% of familial cases. Today’s new discovery of the gene FUS (also known as ALS6) accounts for an additional 3-5% of familial cases and was the result of an international collaboration between scientists in Boston, London, and Sydney. This is very exciting for research because the more we know about what causes ALS, the better our chances of finding an effective treatment through better understanding of the pathways involved in motor neuron degeneration.
Here at PatientsLikeMe, we’ve recently upgraded our ALS platform to capture data on familial ALS patients’ known genetic mutations. The goal is to help familial ALS patients find another patient like them, and to enhance understanding of the phenotype of each mutation, e.g. if different types of mutation cause a faster or slower disease progression. Ultimately our aim is to try and establish whether there might be any treatments that have a differential effect on patients with different disease-causing mutations. There are examples of this already known in other diseases; for instance the presence of absence of the Philadelphia chromosome in chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) predicts whether the patient will respond to the drug Gleevec. Although there is currently only a single effective treatment for ALS (Rilutek), there are a number of trials underway investigating the potential of drugs for patients with specific gene mutations.
The unique outcome data captured on the PatientsLikeMe platform also allows us to learn more about the nature of the disease for FALS patients with different genetic mutations. In the graph above you can see the average rate of progression for patients with three different FALS mutations; the common and aggressive A4V mutation (sadly average survival is ~18 months), the rarer recessive D90A mutation (much longer average survival of ~13 years), and a very rare and recently identified mutation of VAPB, referred to as ALS8. Collecting genetic data and combining it with high-quality patient-reported outcomes helps a patient to answer the question “Given my status, what is the best outcome I can expect to achieve, and how do I get there?”.
Note: If you have familial ALS and know your genetic mutation status please consider joining our ALS community and sharing your genetic information through your diagnosis history.
PatientsLikeMe is proud to announce that team geneticist Catherine Brownstein, Ph.D. will receive the 2008 Young Investigator Award from the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR). The award, given for Dr. Brownstein’s post-graduate creation and study of the Klotho/HYP double knockout mouse, which further elucidates the genes responsible for bone density and phosphate metabolism, will be conferred this September at the ASBMR Annual Meeting in Montréal, Canada.
“I’m honored and excited to receive such a prestigious award,” says Dr. Brownstein. “The ASBMR is a fantastic organization with many brilliant experimental and clinical scientists. I look forward to the meeting in September.”
Dr. Brownstein recently joined the PatientsLikeMe Research & Development team to ready its platform for the incorporation of genetic and biomarker information. PatientsLikeMe’s unique platform gives patients with life-changing illnesses sophisticated personalized outcome tools that previously were only available to clinical research centers like Yale where Dr. Brownstein completed her award winning work. The open data model of PatientsLikeMe and the thousands of active patients provide a unique new opportunity to do collaborative disease discovery and help improve patients’ lives. Dr. Brownstein will be responsible for defining and building the data structures that allow patients, for the first time, to actively participate in disease discovery as well as treatment.
Dr. Brownstein joins an internationally recognized research group including: Paul Wicks, Ph.D., an expert in psychological aspects of neurodegenerative conditions; behavior informaticist Jeana Frost, Ph.D. and social-statistician Michael Massagli, Ph.D., whose recent joint paper on “Social Uses of Personal Health Information Within PatientsLikeMe” is in the peer-reviewed Journal of Medical Internet Research; and Sally Okun, RN, an industry veteran focused on health data integrity for PatientsLikeMe communities. The team is led by James Heywood, co-founder of PatientsLikeMe, and renowned expert on Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).
“Catherine has received a great honor with this award. Yet, we know her work is just beginning,” says Heywood. “Giving patients the power to discover and use genetic information to support discovery and improve care will change the landscape of medicine as we know it.”
In a victory for openness and personalized medicine, on May 1, Congress sent President Bush a bill forbidding employers and health insurers from discriminating on the basis of genetic information. The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act was passed in the Senate 95-0, and in the House of Representatives 414-1, and President Bush is expected to sign it into law.
Now, Americans can take advantage of genetic testing without fear of being dropped from their health insurance or fired from their job for having a pre-existing condition. In essence, a person’s genes are protected in the same manner as their age, gender, race, and religion (and if you think about it, genes are merely an extension of some of those things!). Before this bill became a reality, many individuals were paying in cash for genetic tests or even denying themselves information that could have prepared them for, prevented, or aided in treatment of a disease.
Posted by David S. Williams III | January 22, 2008
Over the past seven months of working at PatientsLikeMe, I’ve come to think that the idea of sharing medical and health information is completely normal. Since giving birth to my nearly 3 year old daughter, I have continued to be eternally grateful to other mothers who have willingly and openly shared their deeply personal experiences and advice so readily. There are some unexpected things you have to deal with, and nothing is so helpful as the wisdom of others who’ve been there. Then this December, I had a moment of pause. All of us at the company received a year-end gift of 23andMe’s Personal Genome Service. Here was my chance to find out what my genes have in store for me and to find out what I might have passed onto my little girl. But do I really want to know? And once I find out, do I want share that information?
Well, it took a while to decide and I hadn’t expected that. I realized that deciding to put very personal details about my health, current or future, out into the world is no small thing. I commend each and every person who has chosen to share their information in our PatientsLikeMe communities. I wouldn’t have made it this far into motherhood without the nitty-gritty, honest information that other mothers have shared with me, and I’ve been truly and deeply inspired by the information that people have so willing shared on our site. I would certainly want access to that knowledge and experience if I needed it. But, if I want to have access to that kind of information, then I have to do my part too. So in the end, I decided to spit. Now I’m waiting to find out what my genes have in store for me and my family. Openness, here I come.
At PatientsLikeMe, people with every type of condition are coming together to share their health experiences, find patients like them and learn how to take control of their health. The result is improved care for patients as well as an acceleration of real-world medical research.
Stay tuned to our blog for the latest happenings with our company, our patients and our mission of opening up the healthcare system.
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our members also participated on PatientsLikeMe teams in walk/run efforts to raise awareness and money in the name of their disease. Congrats to the 40+ teams walking at events to support non-profit organizations like ALS Association, National MS Society, NAMI, Parkinson’s Alliance, APDA, and the MS Society of Canada. The real-time sharing and learning happening on PatientsLikeMe was also highlighted in the report series called 
Innovation: As a leader in Health 2.0, PatientsLikeMe executives are often asked to speak at various industry events. Check out 
Most of the time, people don’t know what causes their Parkinson’s disease. It could be due to genetic factors we haven’t identified yet, environmental exposures, or maybe even something else completely. However, there are some known genetic causes of Parkinson’s disease. Sometimes different genetic mutations have different disease characteristics, so there’s some benefit to knowing what mutation you may have. For example, different genetic mutations can result in an earlier or later onset for Parkinson’s disease, some have a milder or more severe disease course, and others have a higher or lower chance of dementia. Knowing your genetic status could help you plan ahead, especially if you have a strong family history of the disease.
Despite some recent happenings in the news, we’re here to assure you that health 2.0 is still very much alive. Here’s our recent announcement about our new partnership with 23andMe.
