Page 12 - Mobility Management, October 2018

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Quantum Rehab Partners with
Team Gleason to Support ALS Clients
Quantum Rehab has announced a new partnership with Team Gleason to support people living with amyo- trophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
released in 2016 and showed the impact of ALS on Gleason, his wife Michel, and their young son, Rivers.
“Those living with ALS face daily chal- lenges,” said John Storie, VP, Quantum Sales-Eastern America. “Access to life-sustaining mobility should not be
one of them. It’s our privilege to work with Team Gleason to ensure that those living with ALS have the best mobility technology and the highest quality of life possible.”
Austin Edenfield, Technology & Care Coordinator, Team Gleason Foundation, said, “We are excited to work with Quantum to provide essential items on power chairs that will increase the independence of people living with ALS.”
Team Gleason is taking applications from people with ALS who would like seat elevation technology. Applications can be found at www.teamgleason.org/ technologyfaq. m
According to an Aug. 14 news
announcement, Quantum Rehab’s
support is both monetary and
technological. The power wheel-
chair manufacturer has pledged a
$50,000 donation to Team Gleason,
and is also funding seat elevation
technology, including its iLevel
system, that Team Gleason will distribute to people living with ALS.
Team Gleason Foundation is a non-profit created
by Steve Gleason, a former football player for the New Orleans Saints. The organization supports people
living with ALS by providing technology, equipment and services, and also raises public awareness of the condition. Gleason was diagnosed with ALS in 2011. An award-winning documentary of his life, Gleason, was
Steve Gleason
Researchers: New Subtype of Multiple Sclerosis Does Not Damage Brain’s White Matter
Researchers studying the brains of patients who had multiple sclerosis (MS) have found a new “subtype” of the disease that does not damage the so-called white matter of the brain.
Results were published in August in The Lancet Neurology.
Cerebral white matter is made
up of myelinated nerve fibers that
connect portions of the brain and
spinal cord and serve to commu-
nicate with other parts of the body. The demyelination of this white matter has been thought to cause nerve cell denegeration in patients with MS.
Researchers at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio studied brains and spinal cords from patients who had MS when they died. In all, researchers examined brains and spinal cords from 100 deceased patients between May 1998
12 OCTOBER2018|MOBILITYMANAGEMENT
and November 2012.
Though all patients had been diag-
nosed with MS, not all of the tissues examined showed loss of myelin — the protein that protects nerve fibers — in white matter.
Researchers’ findings suggest there’s a “subtype” of MS, which they refer to as myelocortical multiple sclerosis. This subtype results in demyelination of the spinal cord and cerebral cortex, but not of the cerebral white matter. Cortical
neuronal loss, the researchers said, “can be an indepen- dent pathological event in myelocortical MS. Compared with control brains, cortical neuronal loss was greater in myelocortical MS cortex than in typical MS cortex.”
Of the 100 brains studied, 12 of them did not show white matter demyelination, though those 12 did show the loss of neurons seen in MS. m
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BRAIN: ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/VELERI