Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS is a neurodegenerative disease that affects motor neurons in the brain and in the spinal cord. ALS affects approximately 30,000 Americans at a given time. That means that 15 different people are diagnosed every single day in America. In the past few years ALS has received massive media attention through the campaign Ice Bucket challenge. The Ice bucket challenge has been a huge help for the ALS Association (ALSA) in terms of raising money for awareness and research. But the real question is if whether or not that is enough?
As of now there is only one medically approved drug by the FDA and that is the drug riluzole. Riluzole works by slowing the progression of the disease. The process of which riluzole works through the molecular level has not actually be discovered or agreed upon, it is just accepted to say that the drugs works by reducing the levels of the chemical messenger glutamate in the brain. Glutamate in reasonable concentrations is very common and helpful in a normal and healthy human but when there is prolonged over expression of glutamate it becomes extremely toxic and detrimental to nerve cells. This over expression is what eventually leads to the motor neurons being damaged and ultimately the progression of ALS. So the whole purpose of riluzole is to prevents the release of glutamate in the brain along with promoting the uptake of it. While riluzole has had some success in delaying the progression of the disease it by no means reverse the effects or stop the disease. The most common results from the drug is two to three month life expectancy increase along with a 9% increase in the probability of making it to one year.
With riluzole being the only approved drug for treating ALS you may begin to wonder why there is not other treatments. There are two reasons to why I believe that there are not more treatments for ALS and I also believe the first is a result of the the second. The first reason is that our knowledge of what is causing ALS is very limited and that is preventing the development of a successful drug. The second reason is that there is not sufficient money to fund more research into ALS. According to the ALSA they were able to generate $13.6 million dollars for research and of the research that is shown on their website only one of the six research programs they provided information about was directed towards finding a drug to help treat the disease. When comparing the money ALSA was able to provide, it is almost nothing compared to Susan G. Komen’s $49.5 million. Although breast cancer does affect more people than ALS it is just sad to see such a gap in funding because an ALS diagnosisis a death sentence where as a breast cancer diagnosis has a change for survival due to more successful trements regiments. Another cancer organization that does not support just one type of cancer but was almost able to raise more total money then the ALS Association as a whole is Livestrong. Livestrong was able to raise $35.5 million and ALSA was only able to raise $39.2 million.
With ALS lacking a highly successful treatment it is very sad to see that the disease’s association is really lacking when looking at the funding for research compared to other diseases, cancers or organizations. I’m very thankful for this class because it gave me more information about ALS and it also gave me the realization that ALSA needs help with funding to help develop a more successful treatment. I’m sure there are other organizations that also lack the funding and treatments just like ALS and as a society I think we need to step up and help these organizations, not just the major ones. Going forward I’m definitely going to donate money to different cancer and disease organizations because they all need help and I want to be apart of making peoples lives better. So I challenge you to do the same.
Sources:
http://www.alsa.org
http://ww5.komen.org
http://www.livestrong.org