Neurodegenerative disease is a term
that encompasses not just one, but many different diseases. They are
categorized together because they primarily affect the neurons of the
central nervous system. In general, these diseases cause degeneration
of the CNS that is progressive and incurable. At first, sufferers
will begin to lose memory, such as not being able to remember names,
but eventually, with the destruction of more neurons they can lose
the ability to walk, think clearly, or carry out day to day
functions. Many of the diseases have genetic factors, but
environment, age, injury, prions, and toxins may also play a role.
Most of these diseases have no real treatments, and their occurrence
is on the rise. The Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases in
California claims that Alzheimer's will affect half of us before we
are 85 years old. Diagnosing a neurodegenerative disease is also
difficult, and concrete diagnosis is made postmortem up to 80% of the
time. The best way to try and diagnose is to determine the symptoms,
which are sometimes similar from disease to disease. Some examples of
neurodegenerative diseases are, Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Lewy Body,
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Parkinson's, Friedreich's Ataxia, and
Multiple Sclerosis.
The diseases in the articles we are
reading for this week are very common in the US. According to
Harvard's Neuro Discovery Center currently about 5 million Americans
suffer from Alzheimer's disease; 1 million from Parkinson's; 400,000
from multiple sclerosis (MS); and 30,000 from amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease).
Interestingly, many people claim that
sports injuries can be a major determining factor for developing one
of these diseases. Articles such as these,
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/727081
and
http://beckersorthopedicandspine.com/sports-medicine/item/1835-research-links-als-like-disease-to-competitive-athletes
discuss the link between head injuries and later progression of
diseases. Some good evidence for this argument is Muhammad Ali who
now suffers from Parkinson's Disease, and Steve Gleason, a former
football player who has been diagnosed with ALS. More studies need to
be done to not only find the cause of the diseases but to see what
kind of risk factors we as a population are commonly exposing
ourselves to.
Going off of your last point, I found a very interesting link that lists the the number of sports-related head injuries. It also contains some interesting facts about certain sports and the related issues. What caught me by surprise was how cycling has the most head injuries and beats the second most (football) by almost 40,000 incidents. At first, I did not really understand how cycling could have so many incidents, but then I realized that there are so many accidents with learning how to ride a bike, especially in a child's case. In addition, there are different types of cycling, and I had forgotten about some of the more extreme ones like mountain biking. Anyways, here is the link: http://www.aans.org/Patient%20Information/Conditions%20and%20Treatments/Sports-Related%20Head%20Injury.aspx
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