ALS

Mona Yasrebi

Davidson College

Spring 2000

Figure 1- Lou Gehrig played baseball for the New York Yankees 1925-1939. His career was cut short by ALS. Permission to use this picture has been requested from www.baberuth.com.

 

General overview:

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also called Lou Gehrig's disease, is a progressive, fatal neurological motor neuron disease affecting as many as 20,000 Americans with 5,000 new cases occurring in the United States each year.  ALS occurs when specific nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary movement gradually degenerate. The loss of these motor neurons causes the muscles under their control to weaken and waste away, eventually leading to paralysis. Symptoms may include tripping and falling, loss of motor control in hands and arms, difficulty speaking, swallowing and/or breathing, persistent fatigue, and twitching and cramping, sometimes quite severely. ALS strikes in mid-life. Men are about one-and-a-half times more likely to have the disease as women.

                                                           Types  of denervation in nerve muscle

a)  

 

b)

Figure 2- a) H& E stain and  b) ATPase stain (pH 4.3) of atrophic muscle fibers. Permission to use these images has been requested from

Alan Pestronk, MD from the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO.

Links:

  Yale Neuromuscular Program

  Baylor College of Medicine MDA/ALS Clinic

  ALS Association

  World Federation of Neurology ALS

  ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) - Doctor's Guide to the Internet

 

 

Click crazy rat to link to background info about ALS.

 

 

To learn more about the genetics of ALS, click Garfield.  


REFERENCES

Adams, R. D., Victor, M., & Ropper, A. H., eds. (1997). Principles of neurology. (6th ed., pp.1089-1094). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Gurney, M. E., Pu, H., Chiu, A. Y., et al. (1994). Motor neuron degeneration in mice that express a human Cu, Zn superoxide dismutase mutation. Science, 264, 1772-1775.

Rowland, L. P. (1991). Ten central themes in a decade of ALS research. Advances in Neurology, 56, 3-23.

Salazar Grueso, E. F., & Roos, R. P. (1995). Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and viruses. Clinical Neuroscience, 3, 360-367.

Walton, J. N., ed. (1993). Brain diseases of the nervous ystem. (10th ed., pp. 443-449). New York: Oxford University Press.

Send questions, comments, or suggestions to:
 moyasrebi@davidson.edu

Last updated 4/15/00