The paper “Temporal stratification of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients using disease progression patterns”, authored by LASIGE’s collaborator Daniela M. Amaral, PhD student Diogo F. Soares, and integrated researchers Sara C. Madeira and Helena Aidos, has been published in Nature Communications, a top-ranked journal (SCIMAGO Q1). The paper is co-authored by Marta Gromicho, Mamede de Carvalho (Instituto de Medicina Molecular and Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa), and Pedro Tomás (INESC-ID and Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa).

The study focuses on identifying groups of patients with similar disease progression patterns. The paper introduces a novel data-driven temporal stratification approach named ClusTric, which combines triclustering and hierarchical clustering techniques, enabling the discovery of complex disease progression patterns not found by univariate temporal analyses.

The proposed approach is applied to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a neurodegenerative disease characterized by non-linear and heterogeneous progression. This study’s findings reveal four groups of ALS patients, which can be characterized as (i) Slow Progressors, (ii) Moderate Progressors mainly Bulbar, (iii) Moderate Progressors mainly Spinal, and (iv) Fast Progressors. These discoveries hold implications for understanding disease heterogeneity, guiding clinical decisions, and improving patient care.

The paper is available here.