ALS Ice Bucket Challenge Funds Study Linking Gene to the Disease

“AFGE President J. David Cox Sr. Takes ALS Ice Bucket Challenge” by AFGE is licensed under CC BY 2.0 Do you remember seeing videos of people dumping a bucket of water on their head last year or the year before? Chances are if you were on Facebook, you saw at least one. For those who don’t remember or were unaware, those videos were a part of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, which went viral on social media. Users tagged each other to take the challenge within 24 hours or donate to the ALS Association. The challenge raised awareness and money for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS (also commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease). But why dump a bucket of ice water on yourself? One of the common symptoms of ALS is muscle weakness, which can also lead to a feeling of numbness in a patient’s limbs. By pouring a bucket of ice water over yourself, you are meant to be simulating the numbness that many ALS patients feel. During the challenge’s popularity peak, it was often criticized that while it raised awareness for the disease, it was unclear if the challenge was doing much good raising money: “The challenge even seems to be suggesting that being cold, wet, and uncomfortable is preferable to fighting ALS,” wrote Time Magazine news editor Jacob Davidson. While the amount of donations might have been unclear at the time, the ALS Association announced last week that money raised during the challenge funded the study that found the NEK1 gene is linked to the deadly...
Source: Network News - Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Tags: Consumer Health Source Type: news