An expression of the live unlimited spirit, stories and voices of the MDA community
We’re halfway through the summer of Living Unlimited, and so far, you’ve shared nearly 2,000 images showing us—and the world—how you defy daily challenges to live life to its fullest each day, whether you live or love someone with a muscle-debilitating disease or face other limits, both perceived and real, that make some things seem . . .
Jimmy Valdes had a lot of things going for him: a good job, family and friends who loved and cared for him, and an optimistic outlook on life. But he had his challenges, too. Diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy when he was 4 years old, Jimmy says he thought that one milestone in many people’s . . .
At the age of 2, Lorraine Woodward was diagnosed with limb-girdle muscular dystrophy (LGMD), and doctors told her parents that she would not live past 16 years old. Now, at age 54, she has more than outlived those early predictions and made a successful life as a wife, mother, volunteer and entrepreneur. From an early age Lorraine . . .
Doctor after doctor told Tira Ingersoll Foster that she wasn’t going to be able to have children. She proved them wrong, three times over. Tira with her husband Jimmy Born with a rare type of congenital myopathy, Tira is now mom to three healthy children: 5-year-old Tacari, 10-year-old Jaiden and 14-year-old Nylah. “I motivated myself and . . .
This year, MDA is celebrating 30 years of partnering with CITGO Petroleum Corp. to help save and improve the lives of kids and adults – and the families who love them – living with muscular dystrophy, ALS and related muscle-debilitating diseases. Throughout those 30 years, CITGO has made a difference in the lives of so many, . . .
As MDA’s top Shamrocks retailer and a huge supporter of MDA Summer Camp, Lowe’s has helped families live unlimited. Since 2001, they have raised more than $57 million through MDA’s Shamrocks program to help improve lives in hometowns across America and build stronger futures for kids and adults with muscular dystrophy, ALS and related life-threatening . . .
Halloween is a night when kids can be whatever they want to be. They can dress as ghosts, cowboys, astronauts, monsters — the sky’s the limit. That’s exactly what Ryan Wiemer tells the kids he works with. The sky’s the limit. His non-profit, called Magic Wheelchair, helps kids live unlimited by designing and building special costumes. But . . .
Living unlimited is when someone faces a difficult, uncomfortable situation or a “limit” placed on them – by themselves or others — but has the fortitude to defy the limit or move through it. Yesterday, at my visit to one of our 80 MDA Summer Camps, I was reminded again and again how our families face and . . .
Stealth Bio Therapeutics has reported encouraging results from a phase 2 clinical trial to evaluate elamipretide for the treatment of muscle weakness caused by mitochondrial disease. Elamipretide is an experimental drug designed to modify disease by helping to restore normal energy production in mitochondria and decrease oxidative stress. In the completed MMPOWER trial, investigators treated . . .
BioMarin Pharmaceutical has announced that it is discontinuing development of BMN 701, an enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) for the treatment of Pompe disease (acid maltase deficiency, or AMD). In Pompe, a deficiency of an enzyme called acid alpha-glucosidase helps break down sugar stored in cells (glycogen). Without this enzyme, glycogen accumulates in cells and . . .
Sign up for MDA news & updates.
