TUDCA pilot study results

[lgelb]

Here is a summary.

 

[BlueandGold]

Thanks for the summary Laurie.

Vince

 

[Vikman]

I have had my dad on TUDCA 500mg a day since he was diagnosed. This study used 2 grams a day so maybe I'll try to up his dosage.

 

[Diane H]

Oh, gosh. It was hard enough to learn that ALS means Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Now Tauroursodeoxycholic acid? ;-)

 

[notBrad]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
lol

 

[Gorby]

It's an interesting study but I wish they had treated more patients. Only 34 PALS and half were treated with placebo. The results would have been more compelling if it was more than 17 people. Not sure why they make these trials so small.

 

[bear1973]

Doesn't this too lend support to detoxification as a way of slowing the disease? It looks like that is mostly what tudca does in the liver
There is Eric is Winning and others who say detoxification has helped.

 

[lgelb]

The reason for the small N boils down to money and time. It was a pilot study. TUDCA is hypothesized to protect mitochondria from specific destructive mechanisms and so there is interest for Parkinson's, Huntington's, Alzheimer's, retinal disease -- not an Eric-type rationale.

 

[*ENV*]

People can get a little more information about this from a patient-led trial I tried starting back in 2010 using UDCA (ursodeoxycholic acid - about the same thing as TUDCA). The site is ALSURSO - UDCA as Treatment for ALS and has some scientific papers with background on the rationale for trying the treatment. Hopefully that helps.

And Laurie is right - trials are enormously expensive so numbers are necessarily low. That really does hurt the pace of research. Like Dr. Stan Appel once said, "ALS isn't incurable - it's just underfunded."