PatientsLikeMe @ The 20th International ALS/MND Symposium in Berlin

The 20th International Symposium on ALS/MND took place (December 8th-10th) in Berlin, Germany. This is the 4th ALS Symposium attended by PatientsLikeMe, and certainly the most exciting in terms of new findings. The annual symposium is a tremendous opportunity for researchers from around the world to meet and share new developments – it’s the big event for the ALS research community and attracts scientists from across the globe.

PatientsLikeMe Chairman and Co-Founder Jamie Heywood and Research Scientist Timothy Vaughan, PhD presented three posters at the conference with some of the findings we’ve generated this year. The highlight was a poster describing our analysis of the patient-led study of lithium carbonate. Using new techniques that compared patients on lithium to carefully matched control patients, we determined that the drug had no effect on the progression of ALS. The poster was well received with good feedback from experienced experts in the field, and we are currently working on writing up a full analysis and description of our techniques.

berlin-lithium-poster

Our second poster described a small survey we did about emotional lability, also known as pseudobulbar affect (PBA). We found that although many ALS patients suffer from unusual or uncontrollable outbursts of laughter, crying, or anger, patients aren’t discussing these episodes with their physicians.

berlin-pba-poster

Finally, we presented preliminary results from our Familial ALS Genetics Study. About 20 patients have told us about ALS-causing mutations they have, and so far, the data closely resembles other findings reported in the scientific literature. The PatientsLikeMe difference is that patients who know their mutations can find and connect with other patients like them for the very first time.

berlin-genetics-poster

We’d like to thank our research team for all their hard work this year. And of course, we’d like to thank our patients for sharing their data and making each of these studies possible. Here’s to further understanding and continued breakthroughs in 2010!

PatientsLikeMe member jheywood PatientsLikeMe member pwicks PatientsLikeMe member tvaughn

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