Abbotsford resident Ron Martens doesn't have time to wait, so he figures he and hundreds of others in B.C. with Lou Gehrig's disease don't have much to lose by trying a drug combination that has been shown to stall progression of the disease in mice.

There isn't a single, truly effective drug treatment for the disease, whose popular name comes from the New York Yankees baseball star, who died from it in 1941. Martens, a 54-year-old former restaurateur who has lived with the deadly disease (also known as ALS, for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) for six years, says he could be dead by the time human trials are under way, let alone completed.
So he plans to press his neurologist for the drug cocktail, which Montreal researchers reported this week extended the lives of mice with ALS by 20 per cent.

Dr. Andrew Eisen, director of the ALS Clinic at Vancouver Hospital, said he understands the anxiety of patients, who usually face a death sentence within five years of diagnosis, but research in animals doesn't necessarily translate into success in humans.

Still, Eisen said he will probably prescribe the drug combo to some patients if he feels the benefits would outweigh risks associated with potential side effects.

"We are already prescribing two of the three drugs in the study to some patients and we could consider adding the third for selected patients but you have to remember this research was done in mice and it is always preferable to wait for clinical trials [in humans] before proceeding, so we know about safety and efficacy," he said.

The McGill University study, published last week in the Annals of Neurology, described the use of three commonly prescribed drugs that were fed to mice genetically altered with the mutations for ALS.

The combination therapy included minocycline, an antimicrobial medicine often prescribed for acne; nimodipine, a calcium channel blocker used against high blood pressure, and riluzole, which is believed to have a modest effect in protecting motor neurons from degeneration in ALS patients.

ALS, which most commonly affects those in the 40- to 70-year-range, is suspected when patients complain of muscle fatigue or twitches in the hands or lower legs. As the disease progresses, ALS patients lose the ability to walk and feed themselves. Patients usually survive only three to five years after diagnosis and death usually occurs due to respiratory failure. The renowned physicist, Stephen Hawking, is a rarity as one of the longest survivors of the disease; he was diagnosed 40 years ago.

Martens said he has been in one clinical trial on an experimental drug and has used numerous herbal concoctions, with no real benefit.

"I'm very weak now, I can't walk and I can barely stand. I can't feed myself, but my respiratory system is still holding up. My body is getting weaker every month, so I have too look at research like this as if I have nothing to lose, because I've been given a death sentence," he said in an interview.

Jean-Pierre Julien, a co-author of the Montreal study, and one of the leading ALS researchers on the continent, said in an interview the drugs delayed onset of the disease in mice, slowed loss of muscle strength and increased the average lifespan of mice by six weeks. Julien said he expects the Vancouver ALS clinic will participate in clinical trials. The therapy is not expected to reverse the damage already done to patients' motor neurons but it could buy them more time and protect remaining neurons.