New ALS discovery: Scientists reverse protein clumping

sciencebulletin.org

48 points·upen··2 comments

My Ecology professor was a great mentor, leader and hilarious guy. He was super inspirational and taught us that nature was something to marvel at, and always informed us it was our responsibility to take care of it. He grew up a farm-hand in the midwest. And likely developed ALS later in life due to pesticide exposure bioaccumulation. [1]

This is an amazing breakthrough though. Stabilizing the SOD1 could potentially pave the way for preventing ALS in its early stages. Would this reversal of protein clumping help patients who have been exposed to pesticides or had head injuries that lead into ALS?

Also, Please donate to ALS research if you can. [2]

[1] http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/pesticide-exposure-...

[2] http://www.alsa.org/donation

From [1]: “This is an association, not causality,” cautioned the senior author, Dr. Eva L. Feldman, a professor of neurology at the University of Michigan. “We found that people with A.L.S. were five times more likely to have been exposed to pesticides, but we don’t want people to conclude that pesticides cause A.L.S.”

There have been a lot of studies that associated things with ALS. None of them have really held up as a cause. Nor have any treatments really had any meaningful effect. It's a disease we really don't understand well at all.

My mom died of ALS.

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