Petoskey News-Review
Lou Gehrig’s playing career came to an abrupt end on a spring day in Detroit in 1939, while his Yankees visited Briggs Stadium to face the Tigers.
After 2,130 consecutive games, a streak that started when he replaced Wally Pipp in 1925, Gehrig himself handed the lineup card to the umpires, his name replaced by that of Ellsworth "Babe" Dahlgren.
After nearly one year of progressively declining athletic production and increasing weakness, Gehrig had benched himself for the good of the team.
Only five weeks later, doctors at the Mayo Clinic provided Gehrig a diagnosis, and a little known disease was given a new name. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, was scarcely known by the public in 1939. Today, Lou Gehrig’s Disease is a diagnosis recognized by many, known as a cruel and fatal sentence.
Unfortunately, 70 years later, a diagnosis of ALS means the same as it did in 1939. We still cannot offer any significant treatment or cure. It’s a frustrating disease, robbing a person of their strength over several months, eventually leading to failure of muscles that are needed to sustain life.
While we have come closer to understanding its mechanisms, the specific cause of ALS has not been determined and it seems likely that several environmental and genetic factors play a role.
Recently, however, researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine and the VA Medical Center provided an interesting twist to the story. They published a study in the September issue of the Journal of Neuropathology & Experimental Neurology describing three athletes who were given a diagnosis of ALS prior to their death but also had difficulties with their memory and thinking.
In the brains of these athletes, each of whom played contact sports, they found the type of pathological changes that some believe can be linked to a lifetime of repetitive head trauma. Interestingly, similar changes were also seen in their spinal cord neurons, the very same neurons that are known to be damaged in ALS.
Are we to conclude that physical trauma is a risk factor for, or maybe even the direct cause of ALS? The short answer is no.
It is much more likely that these athletes suffered from an, as yet, unnamed ailment quite separate from ALS but with a similar final causal pathway, a concept that is reinforced by a lack of head injury history in the vast majority of ALS cases worldwide.
Lou Gehrig, who also played football in high school and college, died from a progressive neurological disorder that took away his strength. We will never know whether he actually had the disease that bears his name, or whether a separate illness, one linked to playing sports, took his life.
In this way, Mr. Gehrig’s immortal image becomes a clear symbol of the unknown, one that continues to inspire St. Louis neurologists, now more than ever.
After 2,130 consecutive games, a streak that started when he replaced Wally Pipp in 1925, Gehrig himself handed the lineup card to the umpires, his name replaced by that of Ellsworth "Babe" Dahlgren.
After nearly one year of progressively declining athletic production and increasing weakness, Gehrig had benched himself for the good of the team.
Only five weeks later, doctors at the Mayo Clinic provided Gehrig a diagnosis, and a little known disease was given a new name. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, was scarcely known by the public in 1939. Today, Lou Gehrig’s Disease is a diagnosis recognized by many, known as a cruel and fatal sentence.
Unfortunately, 70 years later, a diagnosis of ALS means the same as it did in 1939. We still cannot offer any significant treatment or cure. It’s a frustrating disease, robbing a person of their strength over several months, eventually leading to failure of muscles that are needed to sustain life.
While we have come closer to understanding its mechanisms, the specific cause of ALS has not been determined and it seems likely that several environmental and genetic factors play a role.
Recently, however, researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine and the VA Medical Center provided an interesting twist to the story. They published a study in the September issue of the Journal of Neuropathology & Experimental Neurology describing three athletes who were given a diagnosis of ALS prior to their death but also had difficulties with their memory and thinking.
In the brains of these athletes, each of whom played contact sports, they found the type of pathological changes that some believe can be linked to a lifetime of repetitive head trauma. Interestingly, similar changes were also seen in their spinal cord neurons, the very same neurons that are known to be damaged in ALS.
Are we to conclude that physical trauma is a risk factor for, or maybe even the direct cause of ALS? The short answer is no.
It is much more likely that these athletes suffered from an, as yet, unnamed ailment quite separate from ALS but with a similar final causal pathway, a concept that is reinforced by a lack of head injury history in the vast majority of ALS cases worldwide.
Lou Gehrig, who also played football in high school and college, died from a progressive neurological disorder that took away his strength. We will never know whether he actually had the disease that bears his name, or whether a separate illness, one linked to playing sports, took his life.
In this way, Mr. Gehrig’s immortal image becomes a clear symbol of the unknown, one that continues to inspire St. Louis neurologists, now more than ever.
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