Via Scoop.it – ALS Lou Gehrig’s Disease
What do Lou Gehrig, Stephen Hawking and 30,000 Americans today have in common? A disease with no cure, and until now, no known cause. ALS is also called Lou Gehrig’s Disease, which is named after the famous baseball player who was diagnosed with it in 1939. It is a terminal illness that affects the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. If those cells die, they can’t move certain muscles and the body begins to waste away. Some new research suggests that ALS develops because the cells aren’t taking out the ‘trash.’ Your office and the cells in your body have something in common. Because of all the work going on, there’s also a lot of waste. Just as paper can accumulate in your office, proteins are the unnecessary clutter in a cell. If the garbage isn’t picked up in your office, it piles up. Soon, there’s not enough space to function. Similarly, when there’s no free space in a human cell, it shuts down. It’s a simple idea, but add 30 years of research behind it and you can now understand the cause of ALS. This research on ALS begins a new chapter on ALS that may re-write the ending line for the future tens of thousands waiting for an ALS lifeline.
ALS Research News 