ALS Association and Cytokinetics officials recently welcomed ALS Awareness Month. | Courtesy of Shutterstock
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Amanda Rupp | May 3, 2016

ALS Association, Cytokinetics celebrate ALS Awareness Month

Leaders of the ALS Association, Cytokinetics Inc. and the ALS community at large recently welcomed ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) Awareness Month in May with a variety of awareness initiatives.

“We are honored to join Cytokinetics and representatives from our Greater New York and Golden West Chapters at NASDAQ to recognize May as ALS Awareness Month,” Barb Newhouse, president and CEO of The ALS Association, said. “Advancing potential therapies to treat ALS is key to delivering on our mission. We are thankful that Cytokinetics shares our vision to create a world without ALS.”

The goal of the initiatives is to encourage and further the research being done to develop efficient treatments as well as cures.

ALS, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that impacts the spinal cord and the brain’s nerve cells. People who develop ALS gradually lose their ability to control any muscle movement. Typically, ALS patients are completely paralyzed within a few years after their diagnosis. Between two and five years after diagnosis, most patients die. Researchers have not yet discovered why veterans are two times more likely to develop ALS than the overall population.

As of today, there is no cure for the disease. Scientists do not know why ALS develops. Just one drug exists that the FDA has approved for ALS, and it only slightly extends patients’ survival rates.

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