Did the Ice Bucket Challenge Actually Help?

(RxWiki News) Remember the Ice Bucket Challenge? Most people do. But did it actually change anything?

In 2014, you couldn’t be online for more than a few minutes before you saw a video of someone getting icy water dumped on their head.

It was the iconic Ice Bucket Challenge. It was meant to raise awareness and funds for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

More specifically, the idea was to lead to new medications to treat the fatal neurodegenerative disease. But did it accomplish its goal?

There’s some recent news that suggests that the answer is yes.

As it turns out, the ALS Association invested $2.2 million of the funds raised from the Ice Bucket Challenge into the development of AMX0035. That’s a drug that just got approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a treatment for ALS.

“We thank the millions of people who donated, participated, and enabled us to invest in promising therapies like AMX0035 that will immediately help people living with ALS,” said Calaneet Balas, president and CEO of the ALS Association, in a press release. “This is a victory for the entire ALS community, which came together to advocate for early approval of AMX0035. We still have a lot of work to do to cure ALS, but this new treatment is a significant step in that fight.”

It’s not a cure for the disease, but it’s an FDA-approved treatment that can help.

And that’s just one way in which the funds raised from the challenge have started to make a difference.

According to NPR News, the Ice Bucket trend raised $115 million in total. And the ALS Association said that money was funding 130 research projects in 12 countries, as well as the development of 40 potential ALS treatments.