Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease progression modeling

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a serious and progressive disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. Over time, people with ALS lose control of their muscles, leading to difficulty moving, speaking, swallowing, and eventually breathing. Most people with ALS live only a few years after diagnosis. It is estimated that more than 30,000 people in the United States are currently living with this disease.

Understanding how ALS progresses in each person is important, but also very challenging. The disease can affect different muscle groups in different orders and at different speeds. Traditional research methods often assume a predictable or uniform pattern of disease spread, but this is not how ALS behaves in most patients.

We will develop new statistical methods to better capture the complex and changing patterns of ALS progression over time. Our goal is to build models that help uncover hidden relationships between how the disease spreads in different parts of the body and how fast it progresses. These models will take into account not only when changes happen, but also where in the body they occur.

To do this, we will use advanced techniques that analyze both the timing (when) and spatial (where) aspects of disease spread. These methods—called spatiotemporal models—will allow us to see patterns that may not be obvious through traditional approaches. We will also include different types of patient data, such as continuous measures of muscle strength and whether a muscle is functioning or not, and link these to outcomes like survival.

We will apply our models to large ALS research datasets that include information from many patients over time. By doing so, we hope to identify new patterns in how the disease spreads and find out whether certain spreading patterns are linked to higher or lower risks of death. These insights could help doctors monitor patients more closely, predict outcomes more accurately, and design better clinical trials and treatments.

Our research is expected to provide new tools for scientists and doctors that improve the understanding of ALS and ultimately lead to better care for patients.