After 46 years of teaching, Lois Albright retired, and she and her husband moved from their home in Brenham, Texas to Austin to be closer to family. Her daughters had been encouraging her to retire for many years, but she loved to teach.
“People who retire just get sick or have bad things happen to them,” Lois would say in response.
Just a few months after she retired, Lois was diagnosed with ALS in February 2017 – on Valentine’s Day.
Who would’ve thought?
ALS is a devastating disease with no cure.
But researchers are working to change that. The increased awareness and donations provided by events like the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge—and by people like you—are making a real difference in the pace of discoveries, bringing us ever closer to the end of ALS.
Here are just a few examples of recent advancements in ALS research and technology:
The ALS Association funds the world’s largest ALS research program, working with more than 150 labs around the globe. The ALS Association supports a wide breadth of specific fields of study that are critical to advancing ALS research.
A significant portion of the research funded by the ALS Association is done through the vast network of clinical research and clinical trials. The ALS Association funds a nation-wide network of Certified Treatment Centers of Excellence, which must meet the ALS Association’s clinical care and treatment standards based on the American Academy of Neurology Practice Parameters. In order to achieve this certification, the clinic must participate in ALS-related research and successfully complete a comprehensive site review.
The Neurological Clinical Research Institute has recently made significant strides in working toward diagnosing ALS earlier and measuring the progression of the disease. The NCRI imaging team conducted its first successful PET imaging scan of a person living with ALS to measure inflammation in the brain, which is a promising first step in the TRACK ALS imaging biomarker study.
Dr. Nazem Atassi and his team at Massachusetts General Hospital developed a tracer that binds to support cells of the nervous system in the brain. The tracer serves as a marker of inflammation and tracks changes in the cells of the nervous system. The PET imaging scans measure inflammation in the central nervous system, where cells move to the already damaged area of the brain and worsen damage by further harming neurons.