Pete Frates: The Man who inspired Ice Bucket Challenge is Hospitalized Again

• Pete Frates, a former Boston College Baseball Player, inspired millions when he first started the Ice Bucket Challenge
• Frates suffers from Lou Gehrig's disease and was hospitalized again on Sunday
• The ice bucket challenge is a challenge passed on to friends and family to further create awareness about the ALS disease

Massachusetts, July 4, 2017: Pete Frates, born in Beverly Massachusetts, is a former professional Baseball player. He later moved to Hamburg, Germany to play and coach young baseball players there.

In March 2012, Frates was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), more particularly known as the Lou Gehrig's Disease. At the time, Frates was age 27. The disease breaks down the nervous system and at the time had no cure.

Since the revelation, Frates and his family have tried to raise funds and donations in order to cure his disease.

Frates inspired a social media mega-viral act called the Ice Bucket Challenge, involving a bucket of cold Ice being dumped on the person voluntarily in order to raise awareness for the disease as well as urge donations and funding. You either did the challenge or donated some money to the charity fighting the disease. Many people did both making the awareness a success.

Many celebrities took the ALS Challenge. Donald Trump's video went viral, along with the likes of Justin Bieber, Kardashians, Beckhams and others.

Stephen Hawking nominated his children, while Barack Obama declined his nomination but donated $100 million to the campaign.

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge raised a grand total of more than $200 million. The money went into research at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who successfully discovered a new gene called NEK1. This gene is linked to 3% of ALS patients and could be the potential help for discovering counter-acting drugs.

The ALS Association will now fund the research to be tested on mice for a better understanding of how the gene works out. A further funding of $3.5 million was utilized by researchers at Columbia University to carry out genetic sequencing of 1,500 ALS patients.

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To further support the ALS communities, $23 million has been funded to further support the patients. In Pensylvania, Rhode Island, and Tennessee the patients can now have more sessions with speech pathologists, stairs and lifts for handicapped, and more training for caregivers and counselors, mentioned a news portal.

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has also motivated other communities to create awareness about their issues and gather public support.

Pete Frates has been admitted to the hospital on Sunday Morning. His family stated that "he is resting comfortably" at the General Hospital in Massachusetts. They continued that Pete is "fighting the beast ALS-like a superhero."

Pete Frate's act of courage has been instrumental in the efforts of medical science to find out more about the ALS disease.

– prepared by Saksham Narula of NewsGram. Twitter: @Saksham2394