scispace - formally typeset
Journal ArticleDOI

Onset and spreading patterns of upper and lower motor neuron symptoms in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

TLDR
The potential linkage between upper (UMN) and lower motor neuron (LMN) involvement in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has not yet been fully elucidated.
Abstract
Introduction The potential linkage between upper (UMN) and lower motor neuron (LMN) involvement in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has not yet been fully elucidated. There is ongoing discussion as to whether ALS is primarily a disease of UMNs or LMNs. Methods We performed a retrospective analysis of 189 ALS patients from our ALS outpatient database to investigate the different spreading patterns of UMN and LMN affection in disease progression in relation to the onset region. Results The body region with the highest UMN involvement at onset in general also had the highest frequency of LMN signs and vice versa. This is in line with the hypothesis of a focal onset of disease, which then spreads to adjacent areas. However, there was a great variation between ALS phenotypes. Discussion These observations support the hypothesis of focal damage of a localized group of motor neurons, which then spreads to adjacent motor neurons. Muscle Nerve, 2011

read more

Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI

Can regional spreading of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis motor symptoms be explained by prion-like propagation?

TL;DR: The concept of ‘propagation’ is dissected into contiguous and non-contiguous types, and this concept is expanded to the severity of the focal symptom as well as its regional spread which can be explained by cell to cell propagation in the local neuron pool.
Journal ArticleDOI

Focality, stochasticity and neuroanatomic propagation in ALS pathogenesis.

TL;DR: Deconstructing these early in disease, before temporal-spatial summation induces complexity, shows that ALS begins focally at a seemingly random location and progresses contiguously, which suggests that focality and anatomic propagation of pathology are significant parts of pathogenesis-disease propagates over space as well as progresses over time.
Journal ArticleDOI

Disease origin and progression in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: an immunology perspective

TL;DR: The modalities by which the immune system senses the core pathological process in motor neuron disorders are reviewed, focusing on tissue-specific immune responses in the neuromuscular junction and in the neuroaxis observed in affected individuals and in animal models of ALS.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a distal axonopathy: evidence in mice and man.

TL;DR: It is concluded that in this widely studied animal model of human ALS, and in this single human case, motor neuron pathology begins at the distal axon and proceeds in a "dying back" pattern.
Journal ArticleDOI

ALS motor phenotype heterogeneity, focality, and spread: Deconstructing motor neuron degeneration

TL;DR: Heterogeneity of motor phenotypes suggests motor neuron degeneration in ALS is in actuality a very orderly and actively propagating process and that fundamental molecular mechanisms may be uniform and their chief properties deduced.
Journal ArticleDOI

Focality of upper and lower motor neuron degeneration at the clinical onset of ALS

TL;DR: Motor neuron degeneration in ALS is a focal process at both upper and lower motor neuron levels of the motor system and then advances contiguously and separately to summate over time.
Journal ArticleDOI

Neuropathology with clinical correlations of sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: 102 autopsy cases examined between 1962 and 2000.

TL;DR: Neostriatal and temporal dystrophic neurites were associated with dementia and bulbar‐onset form through temporal lesions and temporal inclusions.
Related Papers (5)