Most people have become aware of ALS as “the thing people dump ice over their heads for” or “the reason Stephen Hawking has to talk out of a computer.”
But what really is it, exactly?
To understand ALS, we have to understand what the central nervous system is: this wonderful control center in our body composed of our brain and our spinal cord.
The brain and spinal cord are connected by and made up of many types of specialized cells called neurons, including the motor neuron which controls the movement of your muscles, and thus your entire body.
When motor neurons start to lose function, the person affected loses control over his/her own body.
It’s a lot like as if John’s game controller breaks and he can no longer use his soccer players on FIFA, so they just start running around in circles and don’t score any goals. This is known as ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
No one really knows what causes ALS, how to treat it, or who’s at a higher risk for being afflicted with it (for some reason, there is a disproportionate amount of Italian soccer players with ALS), all of which is sad because this is a pretty devastating disease.
Symptoms include initially losing control of voluntary movement (which means you can’t walk, talk, or play FIFA the way you used to), progresses to loss of bowel function (which means you can’t… do… other things the way you used to), and leads to not being able to breathe on your own.
The worst part is that people afflicted by ALS usually maintain cognitive function: they are completely aware of what’s going on as they continue to lose control of their own body.
So, that’s a downer.
But while it is important to be aware of how much of an impact ALS has on individuals and populations, it is equally important to be aware of what cool things people are doing to learn more and increase awareness about this source of world suck.
So, for instance, molecular biology research has identified an antioxidant enzyme called SOD1, superoxide dismutase, a causal candidate for ALS.
This enzyme has a pretty kickass name because it does really kickass things. Normally it functions to destroy free radicals: harmful chemicals that basically triggers a cellular damaging domino that ends in cell death.
Recently, however, scientists found that mutations in SOD1 found in some ALS cases can make this once helpful enzyme become toxic to cells.
While this mutated enzyme only occurs in a teensy portion of ALS cases, it has provided scientists with an insight on how ALS works at the molecular and cellular level, something that was previously completely unknown about.
Like, people probably knew more about the genetics of wizards and muggles than they did about ALS at a molecular level before discovering this enzyme. And now we know lots more about it! (SOD1, I mean. I still don’t get how Hermione’s magical powers came to be.)
And now, contributing to ALS research is now as easy as writing your name and email! ….Among other things like family history, current health, and on and on.
The CDC created a registry that recruits persons with ALS, also known as PALS (hehe). The registry collects information about people with the disease to help scientists and epidemiologists better understand it
This helps a ton in terms of making research more efficient so that more can be done to understand this disease better.
This means that it’s easier to conduct clinical trials for drugs that could potentially treat ALS and case studies to identify more causal factors of ALS.
So basically, the CDC has been kicking so much ass this summer between dealing with the Ebola cases and helping make ALS research easier to do. Good on you, CDC!
So there’s a lot that’s been done on ALS, but like a lot of things in the research field, there are also lots of things left to be done.
Research is often limited by the amount of funding scientists are given to run studies and public awareness. Luckily, the ice bucket challenge has done something for the latter, so let’s do something about the former.
Now that you know more about why people are dumping buckets of ice over their heads, I invite you to donate to the ALSA, share this video, and/or become a really cool scientist that does research on ALS.
You can also dump a bucket of ice over your head, if you so wish.
Links to ALS-related things are posted in the description, including the article that talks about that really cool enzyme. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time.
NOTES
Donate to ALSA: http://www.alsa.org/donate/
More about SOD1: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3605887/
CDC National ALS Registry: https://wwwn.cdc.gov/als/Default.aspx
