ALS
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Motor Neuron Disease (MND), Mal Charcot, or Lou Gehrig's Disease, is a life threatening neurodegenerative disease. ALS causes the progressive loss of nervous system control of voluntary muscle systems by breaking down of motor neurons in the nerve cells in the brain and spinal core. It affects one in every 100,000 people, more men than woman, and symptoms don't usually develop until sufferers are in their fifties. The symptoms of ALS include muscle weakness, decrease in muscle coordination and mass, loss of tissue due to a lack of nervous stimulation, possible paralysis, muscle cramps, voice impairment like hoarseness, slow or abnormal speech, difficulty swallowing and breathing, urinary urgency, leg ankle and feet swelling. Additionally, the nerves controlling muscles in
asp?li=MNI&d=51&cu=16583&w=1&ArticleKey=265http://www. ALS is a terrible debilitating disease that we are only beginning to understand, and hopefully with new genetic technology we can find a cure. In some cases it is known that people inherit ALS, but often there are sporadic or non-inherited cases too. The first drug in the world available for ALS since the disease was discovered in 1869, was Rilutec. One of them carried mutations that produced familial ALS, and another carried the human proto-oncogene Bcl-2, which is known to protect against apoptosis or cell death. The newly identified mutations involve a protein called EAAT2 where some of the useless introns that are supposed to be cut out of the DNA, are kept, while exons are discarded. Pre-clinical studies show that Rilutec has a neuroprotective effect acting in a number of ways to reduce the neurotoxic effects of glutamate. Nearly 30,000 people currently have the disease, and 95 percent of them are thought to have the sporadic form. nsf/news/57A417503DD0A7F2852562DF007D1ABB?OpenDocument&id=48DDE4A73E09A969852568880078C249&count=10&highlight=0,lou,gehrig's,disease. This study suggests that gene therapy either with Bcl-2 or with another! gene capable of preventing cell death could help delay the onset of ALS. This produces defective RNA that leads to a defective EAAT2 protein or no protein at all.
Common topics in this essay:
Gehrig's Disease,
ALS Bcl-2,
Guam Nearly,
Johns Hopkins,
Medical Center,
Rilutec Pre-clinical,
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,
brain spinal,
amyotrophic lateral,
als bcl-2,
nerve cells,
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lateral sclerosis,
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