About ALS
What is ALS?
Many people know ALS as Lou Gehrig's disease - coined after the legendary baseball player, Lou Gehrig, who became ill with ALS and later died of it in 1941.
ALS is a disease that affects the nerve cells that make muscles work in both the upper and lower parts of the body. This disease causes these nerve cells stop working and die.
The nerves lose the ability to trigger specific muscles, which causes the muscles to become weak and leads to paralysis.
How many people have ALS?
It is difficult to estimate the number of ALS cases in the United States because this information is not actively collected. Current knowledge of the disease indicates
that ALS is slightly more common in men than women. It also appears to be age-dependent related, in that most people discover they have the disease when they are
between the ages of 55 and 75 years. The subsequent life expectancy of such an individual is 3 to 5 years after symptoms develop. How long a person lives with
ALS seems to be related to age at onset; people who are younger when the illness starts tend to live slightly longer lives than those whose illness begins at an older age.
About 5-10% of ALS cases occur within families. This is called familial ALS and it means that two or more people in a family have ALS. Familial ALS is found equally among men and
women. People with familial ALS usually do not fare as well as ALS patients who are not related, and typically live only one to two years after symptoms appear.
What causes ALS?
No one knows for certain what causes ALS in our society. Scientists and medical doctors have been studying a variety of factors that could potentially be linked to ALS,
including one's genetics and environmental exposures. Scientists have also explored the impact of diet or injury on the disease. Although no cause has yet been found
for most cases of ALS, a number of inherited factors have been associated familial ALS.
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