In this observational study, participants with ALS and related disorders will be followed longitudinally over the course of a year to examine disease progression. Participants with ALS or a related disorder will have up to 5 in-person visits at screening, 0, 4, 8 and 12 months. Healthy controls are included as comparisons and will have 3 in-person visits at screening, 0 and 8 months. At each visit after screening, patients and healthy controls will undergo an MRI, neurocognitive and speech testing, clinical evaluations specific to ALS (ALSFRS-R, FVC, neurological exam, which are not completed by controls), answer questionnaires about their health and have biospecimens, including blood, saliva and optionally cerebrospinal fluid, collected.
CAPTURE ALS is a long-term data and biorepository platform that will facilitate future ALS research. CAPTURE ALS will provide the standardized systems and tools necessary to collect, store, and analyze vast amounts of multimodal information about ALS. These multimodal datasets and biosamples will be made available for use by researchers or industry across Canada and around the world in accordance with the CAPTURE ALS Data Sharing Policy to advance research on ALS.