Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a neurodegenerative disorder of motor neurons. Motor neurons are a type of nerve cell that stimulates muscles so they can move. Motor neurons can originate from the brain or spinal cord. You’ve likely heard about this disease if you are familiar with Stephen Hawking or have read the short novel Tuesday’s with Morrie. Although Stephen Hawking has lived to be 75 years old, the average person with ALS dies only 3 years after being diagnosed. Symptoms of ALS include the following:
- Difficulty performing daily activities like walking
- Impaired speech
- Weakness or clumsiness of hands and/or feet
- Muscle cramps
Our neurochemistry class at Concordia College focused on reading literature on the underlying mechanisms behind the cause of ALS. Scientist are now finding that oxidative stress on the motor neurons could be the source of the mysterious die off of cells. They are hypothesizing that a sub set of people are lacking a few ‘house keeping’ proteins that normally allow motor neurons to deal with an increased work load. Without these essential proteins, the neurons eventually die because of the toxic build up of metabolic by-products.
One of the most frustrating parts of neurodegenerative diseases is that there are no cures for any of them at this time. For the people not involved in the research as well as those who have been diagnosed with ALS or any of the other myriads of neurodegenerative diseases, it can be easy to rationalize anger towards the scientific community for not solving this problem yet. You’re telling me we have the capability of performing a head transplant, but we don’t know how to cure a single nervous system disease??
I had this same thought a few years ago before I attended the national convention for the Society of Neuroscience. Then I saw the work being done behind the scenes. Hundreds upon hundreds of presentations on every sort of nervous system disease (an entire section dedicated to ALS studies) you could possibly name. Undergraduates like myself, graduate students presenting their dissertations, as well as professors that have dedicated their lives to understanding diseases like ALS showed the information they had gathered.
Despite the largest convention center in North America being filled to the brim with the newest information on nervous system diseases, we still don’t know what causes ALS, nor do we understand how it manifests in ~5,500 new people every year. With the vast amount of knowledge we have, the question is raised of whether or not we will ever find a cure? Could a cocktail of synthetic drugs leave us in peace for our remaining years? Or are we now actually trying to battle mortality? The disease that used to plague us consisted of bacteria and viruses that attempted to take over our bodies, but now we are battling the wear and tear of life. Maybe we will find a cure for ALS. Then again, maybe we’re not meant to. Regardless of future scientific advances, we should do our best to live every day to the fullest. Life is precious because it doesn’t last forever.
