What is Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis? What are the facts that we should know about the disease?

ALS or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis is an advanced neurodegenerative disease that affects the brain's nerve cells and spinal cord. It is also referred as Motor Neuron Disease, Charcot Disease or Lou Gehrig's disease.   From the brain, motor neurons reach to the spinal cord and to the muscles throughout the body. In ALS, the rapid deterioration of the motor neurons leads to their death. When motor neurons die, the brain's capacity to initiate and control muscle action is lost. With voluntary muscle movement increasingly affected, patients in the advanced stages of the sickness may become entirely paralyzed.

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis is often characterized by muscle spasticity, fast progressive muscle weakness due to atrophy, the condition where muscles become smaller resulting to thinner limbs, and also difficulty in speaking, swallowing and breathing as symptoms of early ALS detection.

Stephen Hawking, an English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, is one of the famous personalities that have been stricken with ALS disease.

But what is ALS? What are the facts that we should know about? Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis is not contagious, and anyone can be stricken with the disease. Reportedly, almost five thousand people are diagnosed in the United States yearly and is estimated that nearly thirty thousand Americans may have the illness at any given time.

Annually, it is projected that ALS is responsible for approximately two deaths per hundred thousand populations. The average life expectancy of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis stricken patients are about two to five years from time of detection. More than half of all the patients with quality living, however, live more than its expectancy after the diagnosis.

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis has a sinister onset with muscle weakness or stiffness as initial symptoms. Weakness advancement, muscle wasting and paralysis of the limbs and trunk together with the vital control functions such as speech, swallowing and later breathing eventually follows.

In the late 90s, FDA approved the first treatment that modifies the course of ALS. The antiglutamate drug, Riluzole, scientifically exhibited in prolonging the life expectancies of the ALS patients. Reports show the increasing effect of Riluzole drug in the ALS patients' survival, thus acknowledging the studies to have long term advantage.

With the recent trend and developments, it is without a doubt that Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis disease can be controlled once detected on its early stages. Promoting quality living among the patients greatly affects their life expectancy.

Therefore ALS disease should not be feared. With the right knowledge about the disease, we can truly help in understanding and supporting patients who are stricken with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.