UCSF Researcher Identifies Risk Genes for ALS
The largest analysis to date of genetic data in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) – the muscle-crippling neurodegenerative disease that afflicted the late astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and cut short the career of iconic Yankee baseball slugger Lou Gehrig – has identified two previously unrecognized genetic risks that are significantly associated with the disease.
In the new study, published April 9 in JAMA Neurology, scientists from UC San Francisco and Washington University found that one of the newly identified ALS-associated genetic variants also is a risk factor for another neurodegenerative disease, frontotemporal dementia (FTD), which typically weakens a different set of brain functions.
Many questions remain about the distinctions and similarities between the start and progression of ALS, which affects about 30,000 people in the United States, and that of other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and FTD.