OT: Study about ALS, concussions and athletes

[Beninator]

Lou Gehrig may not have had ALS!

Interesting study about to be published by the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Bedford, Mass,and the Boston University School of Medicine regarding concussions from athletes and soldiers and the claim that these people did not have ALS but a different fatal disease caused by concussion like trauma that erodes the central nervous system!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38739308/ns/health-the_new_york_times/

[SFP]

Ben - Thanks for the post. I read a similar article but from ESPN which did not really say anything that made sense. Your post clears up what the article should have pointed out.

[tornado]

I think there will be less than a consensus among experts on this, but it is interesting........
but - ALS is clearly a discrete illness that occurs even in the absence of head trauma...

admittedly a statement like this is speculative..
"some other (individuals) given a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,
... might have been catalyzed by injuries.. concussions and other brain trauma."


So maybe some of those diagnosed 70-75 years ago like Lou Gehrig, had a different cause or condition??
Well, sure it's possible, but near impossible to prove or disprove, since those people are no longer around to be studied..

Note that this is all based on THREE cases of people who had numerous, severe traumas and blows to the head and neck (NFL Football players)...and those three guys had evidence that their illness that looked like ALS was maybe really something else that was instead due to trauma.

But the vast majority of ALS patients have no such history of numerous traumas and severe contact sports injuries....so I think this may be quite a leap...


But this whole theory is NOT at new... it's long been thought that severe and repeated head trauma can give rise to several different neurological pictures that mimic other illnesses.....for example, many have questioned if Muhammad Ali's "Parkinson's Disease" is really true Parkinson's Disease or is it a mimicking syndrome caused by head trauma (what used to be called "punch-drunk")
Some drugs can cause irreversible neurological damage that looks precisely like typical Parkinson's or Huntington's Disease...via the same mechanism -- local areas of damage, so it's reasonable trauma can do this.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/punch-drunk

[SFP]

T- I'm with you on this. My personal belief is that ALS is manifested by having a genetic disposition, in which your body reacts to certain environmental conditions. Studies have found that there is a high number of ALS patients that were in close proximity and or working with concentrated amounts of pesticides and or on landfills.