The US Food and Drug Administration building

Edaravone is not yet available on prescription in New Zealand. MND New Zealand will keep our community informed about further developments and what they may mean for people with MND in New Zealand. This is what we know so far. On Friday 5 May, the US Food and Drug Administration (the FDA) announced its approval … Read more

Organically grown vegetables

New research has confirmed a link between pesticides and an increased risk of MND… but don’t panic and chuck out all your non-organic veggies just yet. It’s specifically to do with exposure at work to organochlorine pesticides, many of which are now banned (like DDT). Read more about this interesting line of research here.  Dr Belinda … Read more

Pills

Another interesting finding in the ongoing hunt for MND treatments comes from University of Tokyo researchers, who have discovered that a safe, existing anti-epileptic drug called perampanel has successfully prevented the death of motor neurons in mice with an animal model of MND. Their research shows that perampanel is worthy of a clinical trial for … Read more

TDP-43

If you looked at the motor neurones of people with MND down the microscope, you would see clumps of a protein called TDP-43. Researchers around the world are working to find why these clumps form and how they are linked to MND. Dr Jemeen Sreedharan has been looking at the effects of TDP-43 in fruit … Read more

Dr Richard Bedlack

“I’ve never seen a more exciting year,” says Dr Richard Bedlack, top doc at the Duke ALS Clinic in the US. He thinks 2016 is a pivotal year in the fight against MND/ALS, because in just the last year scientists have made a number of potential breakthroughs (greatly due to money brought in by the … Read more