Lou Gehrig's Disease or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a neurological disorder characterized by progressive degeneration of motor neuron cells in the spinal cord and brain, which ultimately results in paralysis and death. The disease takes its less-scientific name from Lou Gehrig, a baseball player with the New York Yankees in the late 1920s and 1930s, who was forced to retire in 1939 as a result of the loss of motor control caused by the disease.
In 1991, a team of researchers linked familial ALS to chromosome 21. Two years later, the SOD1 gene was identified as being associated with many cases of familial ALS. The enzyme coded for by SOD1 carries out a very important function in cells: it removes dangerous superoxide radicals by converting them into non-harmful substances. Defects in the action of this enzyme mean that the superoxide radicals attack cells from the inside, causing their death. Several different mutations in this enzyme all result in ALS, making the exact molecular cause of the disease difficult to ascertain.
Recent research has suggested that treatment with drugs called antioxidants may benefit ALS patients. However, since the molecular genetics of the disease are still unclear, a significant amount of research is still required to design other promising treatments for ALS.
Researchers have designed and tested a molecular therapy in animals that they hope will be a major development in the fight to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease.
Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, Lou Gehrig's disease and other brain disorders are among a growing list of maladies attributed to oxidative stress, the cell damage caused during metabolism when the oxygen in the body assumes ever more chemically reactive forms.
In a dramatic display of stem cells' potential for healing, a team of Johns Hopkins scientists reports that they've engineered new, completed, fully-working motor neuron circuits - neurons stretching from spinal cord to target muscles - in paralyzed adult animals.
During embryonic development, nerve cells hesitantly extend tentacle-like protrusions called axons that sniff their way through a labyrinth of attractive and repulsive chemical cues that guide them to their target.
The study prompted a new coalition of researchers, health care providers, business leaders and senior advocates to call for an "all-out push" to find a cure.
In a study of 40 patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), about one-third showed evidence of cognitive impairment, but these deficits did not appear to be related to survival, according to a study in the March issue of Archives of Neurology.
New animal research suggests that two well-studied drugs, thalidomide and its derivative, lenalidomide, might extend the survival of patients with the neurological disorder amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School have discovered the gene responsible for a type of ataxia, an incurable degenerative brain disease affecting movement and coordination.
A new study in mice suggests that Alzheimer's disease (AD) may be triggered when adult neurons try to divide. The finding helps researchers understand what goes wrong in the disease and may lead to new ways of treating it.
A joint research effort between researchers at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in La Jolla, CA, and a team from Japan (Iwate University, Osaka City University, Gifu University, Iwate Medical University) has discovered a novel way to treat stroke and neurodegenerative disorders.
Exactly how ALS - Lou Gehrig's disease - damages motor neurons is one of medical science's lingering mysteries. At least six mishaps within cells appear to contribute to the death of the nerves that enable muscle movement, but nothing stands out as the key problem.
Most people with a rare type of dementia called primary progressive aphasia (PPA) have a specific combination of prion gene variants, a new study shows.
A new study in mice gives hope that a combination of gene therapy and exercise may extend the lives of people who have Lou Gehrig's disease.
French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot first described amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 1869, but, nearly 140 years later, little is known about the cause of the devastating neurodegenerative disease, and there is no cure.
A way to detect fragments of broken brain cells that leak into the bloodstream may help doctors more quickly and precisely treat people with severe head injuries or brain diseases, say researchers at the University of Florida's McKnight Brain Institute.
Yale School of Medicine researchers report in Science this week genetic evidence for the hypothesis that myelination, or formation of a protective sheath around a nerve fiber, consolidates neural circuitry by suppressing plasticity in the mature brain.
CytRx Corporation today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted "Fast Track" designation for the company's leading drug candidate arimoclomol for the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease).
A University of California - San Francisco (UCSF) study has found that a specific signaling link between neurons and muscles in the fruit fly is essential for keeping the insect's nervous system stable.
African-American women who carry the 10398A mitochondrial DNA allele are 60 percent more likely to develop invasive breast cancer than African-American females without that genetic marker, according to research published in the September 1 issue of "Cancer Research."
A new study indicates that mutant Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase (SOD1) enzymes that are associated with an inherited form of Lou Gehrig's disease cause the protein to become sticky in tissues. Partial unfolding of the mutant protein can expose hydrophobic residues that may promote abnormal interactions with other proteins or membranes in the cell.
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