IBAS − Institute for Breathing and Sleep

What we do > Current Projects > Respiratory > How the lungs work > Respiratory Biomarkers in Motor Neurone Disease

Respiratory Biomarkers in Motor Neurone Disease

The inability to breathe is unfortunately the most common cause of death in people living with Motor Neurone Disease (MND). Last year, our clinical research group in Melbourne reported that breathing assistance overnight (noninvasive ventilation or NIV) increases average survival by 13 months. Also importantly, it appeared that respiratory function and strength tests might allow us to target when is the best time to start NIV; too early and there is too much patient and carer burden, too late and benefit is lost. Our results and recent UK data further suggest that respiratory muscle strength tests could function as "biomarkers" that would help researchers better target when to test new therapies and drugs in MND. Before we can translate these findings into practice, the results must be checked in a separate but similar group. We propose to extend our existing cohort to 2016 (25 years of data) to test the UK results and to use Australian Motor Neurone Disease Register data on people outside Victoria to check our Victorian findings. These experiments will increase our ability to run clinical trials that find effects and will provide specific estimates of when to start NIV so that clinicians can best advise individual people with MND about exactly when breathing assistance overnight should be started.

Full Name

Translation of Respiratory Biomarkers into MND Practice

Primary Investigator

Mark Howard

Stream

Respiratory > How the lungs work

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