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A History Of ALS

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a motor neuron disease, first identified in 1869 by the noted French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. Lou Gehrig, with whom ALS is most commonly associated with in the United States , first brought national and international attention to the disease back in 1939 when he abruptly retired from baseball after being diagnosed with ALS. ALS is one of the most common neuromuscular diseases worldwide, and people of all races and ethnic backgrounds are affected. Approximately 5,600 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with ALS each year 1 to 2 people per 100,000 develop ALS each year. ALS most commonly strikes people between 40 and 70 years of age, but younger and older people can also develop the disease. ALS is 20% more common in men than in women.

Famous ALS Patients

The disease ALS has cut short the lives of such remarkable and courageous individuals as Hall of Fame pitcher Jim "Catfish" Hunter, Senator Jacob Javits, actors Michael Zaslow and David Niven, director/ writer/ executive producer of Sesame Street Jon Stone, boxing champion Ezzard Charles, NBA Hall of Fame basketball player George Yardley, NFL player Glenn Montgomery, golf caddie Bruce Edwards, British soccer player Jimmy Johnstone, musician Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter), photographer Eddie Adams, entertainer Dennis Day, jazz musician Charles Mingus and U.S. Army General Maxwell Taylor. Also notable in the mathematical and scientific fields Stephan Hawking.

Types Of Lou Gehrig Diagnosis

The majority about 75% of ALS diagnosis is called “limb onset”. In some of these cases, symptoms initially affect one of the legs, and patients experience awkwardness when walking or running or they notice that they are tripping or stumbling more often. Other limb onset patients first see the effects of the disease on a hand or arm as they experience difficulty with simple tasks requiring manual dexterity such as buttoning a shirt, writing, or turning a key in a lock.

The minority about 25% of Lou Gehrig’s disease diagnosis is called “bulbar onset”. These patients first notice difficulty speaking clearly. Speech becomes garbled and slurred. Nasality and loss of volume are frequently the first symptoms. Difficulty swallowing and loss of tongue mobility follow. Eventually total loss of speech and the inability to protect the airway when swallowing are experienced.

Because symptoms of ALS can be similar to those of a wide variety of other, more treatable diseases or disorders, appropriate tests must be conducted to exclude the possibility of other conditions. One of these tests is electromyography (EMG), a special recording technique that detects electrical activity in muscles. Certain EMG findings can support the diagnosis of ALS. Another common test measures nerve conduction velocity (NCV). Specific abnormalities in the NCV results may suggest, for example, that the patient has a form of peripheral neuropathy (damage to peripheral nerves) or myopathy (muscle disease) rather than ALS. The physician may order magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a noninvasive procedure that uses a magnetic field and radio waves to take detailed images of the brain and spinal cord. Although these MRI scans are often normal in patients with ALS, they can reveal evidence of other problems that may be causing the symptoms, such as a spinal cord tumor, multiple sclerosis, a herniated disk in the neck, syringomyelia, or cervical spondylosis.

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