Looking retrospectively at blood samples allows researchers to spot ALS, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Testing hundreds of blood samples collected years ago allowed researchers at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere to create a panel of proteins that point to the develop of ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, up to 10 years later. Alex Pantelyat, a movement disorders expert at Hopkins, explains.

Pantelyat: Specific proteins were found to be different for patients with Lou Gehrig's disease than in healthy controls or those with other diseases up to 10 years before the clinical symptoms of ALS manifested. That involved examining the samples collected from people who did and did not have ALS. A proportion of those patients later developed symptoms of ALS and thus were clinically diagnosed. That's how looking backwards using the samples that were collected during the asymptomatic period of ALS our team was able to come to this conclusion.            :33

Pantelyat says the good news is the technology is currently available. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.