There are many different types of degenerative diseases. With Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, patients suffer from motor neuron degeneration, and there are about 25,000 individuals in the United States that have ALS, which also is known often as Lou Gehrig's disease after the famous New York Yankee whose career and life were cut short by ALS.
The motor neurons that are affected when one has Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or ALS are part of every human's central nervous system. While there are several similar types of motor neuron diseases, ALS is the most prevalent. Generally, people begin to experience symptoms of ALS around the age of 40, with typical onset being between 40 and 60 years of age. However, there have been cases of much younger individuals contracting the disease. Unfortunately, there is no current cure for this fatal disease, and death typically occurs in less than three years after the onset of symptoms. Occasionally, a patient will live ten or more years with ALS, but this is very rare.
Often the initial symptom of ALS is muscle weakness, and this is because when the neurons begin to degenerate our muscles atrophy. Often a person with early stage ALS will experience weakness as well as not being able to control typical involuntary movements, such as lifting a cup of coffee or throwing a ball. Muscle twitching is another early symptom, as well as slurred speech, difficulty walking or running and problems with normal tasks such as writing, brushing teeth or buttoning a shirt.
As time passes, the degeneration can cause a person to lose most of their ability to move, and most end-stage ALS patients are confined to wheelchairs or even bed-ridden and hospice care is needed. Difficulty swallowing can cause those with ALS to choke and become unable to eat solid foods, and loss of respiratory function also often occurs. Patients often are fed through a tube and placed on ventilators to ensure nutrition and breathing. There are a few drugs that can help ease some of the symptoms, and one drug has been developed that slows the progression of the disease slightly, but no truly effective treatments have been created yet.
In the 1990s, scientists found that is about 20% of ALS cases, a certain type of gene mutation was present, although they are not sure what causes the mutation. Inheriting ALS is rare but does happen occasionally, and this has been linked to a specific chromosome in the body. Within the last few years, a bigger discovery has targeted the protein identified as C9orf72 as the most likely culprit for ALS. The problem exists in one section of the protein. Typically this section will repeat about 30 times for most people, but with ALS patients, the repetition occurs many hundreds of times. No one yet knows why this repetition happens, but it does seem to cause the development of ALS.
Studying proteins has provided scientists with many clues about ALS and other degenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. In order to study proteins, biotech firms complete important services such as N-terminal sequencing, peptide synthesis and protein synthesis, as well as custom protein expression. All of these services aid further studies. Hopefully, one day researchers will find medicines to prohibit the progression of these diseases and also eventually find a way to cure or prevent these diseases from occurring.
The motor neurons that are affected when one has Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or ALS are part of every human's central nervous system. While there are several similar types of motor neuron diseases, ALS is the most prevalent. Generally, people begin to experience symptoms of ALS around the age of 40, with typical onset being between 40 and 60 years of age. However, there have been cases of much younger individuals contracting the disease. Unfortunately, there is no current cure for this fatal disease, and death typically occurs in less than three years after the onset of symptoms. Occasionally, a patient will live ten or more years with ALS, but this is very rare.
Often the initial symptom of ALS is muscle weakness, and this is because when the neurons begin to degenerate our muscles atrophy. Often a person with early stage ALS will experience weakness as well as not being able to control typical involuntary movements, such as lifting a cup of coffee or throwing a ball. Muscle twitching is another early symptom, as well as slurred speech, difficulty walking or running and problems with normal tasks such as writing, brushing teeth or buttoning a shirt.
As time passes, the degeneration can cause a person to lose most of their ability to move, and most end-stage ALS patients are confined to wheelchairs or even bed-ridden and hospice care is needed. Difficulty swallowing can cause those with ALS to choke and become unable to eat solid foods, and loss of respiratory function also often occurs. Patients often are fed through a tube and placed on ventilators to ensure nutrition and breathing. There are a few drugs that can help ease some of the symptoms, and one drug has been developed that slows the progression of the disease slightly, but no truly effective treatments have been created yet.
In the 1990s, scientists found that is about 20% of ALS cases, a certain type of gene mutation was present, although they are not sure what causes the mutation. Inheriting ALS is rare but does happen occasionally, and this has been linked to a specific chromosome in the body. Within the last few years, a bigger discovery has targeted the protein identified as C9orf72 as the most likely culprit for ALS. The problem exists in one section of the protein. Typically this section will repeat about 30 times for most people, but with ALS patients, the repetition occurs many hundreds of times. No one yet knows why this repetition happens, but it does seem to cause the development of ALS.
Studying proteins has provided scientists with many clues about ALS and other degenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. In order to study proteins, biotech firms complete important services such as N-terminal sequencing, peptide synthesis and protein synthesis, as well as custom protein expression. All of these services aid further studies. Hopefully, one day researchers will find medicines to prohibit the progression of these diseases and also eventually find a way to cure or prevent these diseases from occurring.
About the Author:
Armand Zeiders enjoys blogging about biomedical research. To get more information about protein sequencing service, or to find more biotechnology services, click here.
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