"ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease): Fishing for Answers"
Lou Gehrig’s disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS
strikes healthy, middle-aged people seemingly at random,
and, of the major neurodegenerative diseases,
it has the least hope for treatment and survival.
Although mental capabilities stay intact,
ALS paralyzes people, often from the outside in,
and most patients die within three years
when they can no longer breathe or swallow.
At any given time, an estimated 30,000
are fighting for their life with it in this country.
We each have about a 1 in 400 chance
of developing this dreaded disease.
So ALS is more common than generally recognized,
an incidence rate now close to that of
multiple sclerosis.
What causes it?
Well, 50 years ago scientists found
that the rate of ALS among the indigenous peoples
on the island of Guam was 100 times that found
in the rest of the world,
potentially offering a clue
into the cause of the disease.
So instead of 1 in 400, in some villages in Guam
1 in 3 adults died of the disease.
Cycad trees were suspected,
since the powdered seeds were
a dietary staple of the natives
and there were reports of livestock showing
neurological disease after eating from it.
And indeed a new neurotoxin was found in the seeds,
called BMAA.
Maybe that’s what was causing such high levels of ALS.
But the amount of BMAA in the seeds people ate was so small
that it was calculated that people would have to eat
like a thousand kilograms a day to get a toxic dose—
that’s like a ton of seeds daily.
So the whole cycad theory was thrown out
and the trail went cold.
But then famed neurologist Oliver Sacks and colleague
had an idea.
Cycad seeds were not all the natives ate.
They also ate fruit bats, stewed in coconut milk,
and guess what these so called flying foxes ate?
Cycad tree seeds.
So maybe this is a case of biomagnification
up the food chain.
Remember how you’d have to eat like a ton of seeds worth
of BMAA to run into problems?
Well guess how much builds up in the flesh of flying foxes.
A ton worth of BMAA.
And natives also ate other animals
that foraged on the seeds.
The final nail in the coffin
was the detection of high levels of BMMA
in the brains of 6 out of 6 native victims
of the disease on autopsy,
but not in control brains of healthy people that died.
So with the final puzzle piece apparently in place,
the solution to this mysterious cluster
on some exotic tropical isle of ALS/PDC,
so-called because the form of ALS
attacking people in Guam
also had signs of Parkinson’s disease and dementia,
so they called it ALS parkinsonism dementia complex.
So for the heck of it, when the researchers were choosing
a comparison group of control brains,
they threw in two cases of Alzheimer’s disease.
And they had BMAA in their brains too.
But these were Alzheimer’s victims in Canada-
on the opposite side of the globe.
So they ran more autopsies.
No BMAA in the control brains,
but BMAA was detected in ALL
of the Canadian Azheimer’s victims tested.
Wait a second!
Canadians don’t eat fruit bats.
Well, the neurotoxin isn’t made by the bat.
Yeah, it’s made by the trees.
But Canadians don’t eat cycad trees either.
Their flag doesn’t look like this.
It turns out that cycad trees don’t make
the neurotoxin either.
A blue-green algae that grows in the roots
of the cycad trees makes the BMAA
that gets into the seeds,
that gets into the bats,
that gets into the people.
And it’s not just this type of blue-green algae—
but nearly all types of blue-green algae
found all over the world produce this neurotoxin.
Up until only about a decade ago
we thought this neurotoxin was confined
to this one weird tropical tree,
but now we know the neurotoxin
is created by algae throughout the world,
from Europe to the U.S., Australia, the middle east, everywhere.
So if these neurotoxin-producing blue-green algae
are ubiquitous throughout the world,
maybe BMAA is a cause
of progressive neurodegenerative diseases including ALS worldwide.
Researchers in Miami put it to the test.
Maybe the Canadians were a fluke?
No, the researchers found BMAA in the brains
of Floridians who died from sporadic Alzheimer’s disease and ALS,
but not in the brains of those that died from a different
neurodegenerative disease called Huntington’s,
which we know is caused by genetic mutation,
not some neurotoxin.
Significant levels of BMAA in 49 out of 50 samples
from 12 Alzheimer’s patients and 13 ALS patients.
The results for American Alzheimer’s
and ALS patients from the Atlantic southeast
compared to Canadian Alzheimer’s patients
from the Pacific Northwest
suggest that exposure to BMAA may be widespread.
The same thing was then found in the brains
of those dying from Parkinson’s disease.
You can even pick up more BMAA in the hair
of live ALS patients compared to controls.
So is BMAA, this neurotoxin, found in Florida seafood?
All over the place,
in freshwater fish and shellfish,
like oysters and bass,
and out in the bay.
In fact some of the fish, shrimp, and crabs had levels of BMAA
comparable to those found in the fruit bats in Guam.
In the U.S., the fish may be the fruit bats.