Reading Time: 3 minutes Research into the neurodegenerative condition known as Guam ALS-Parkinson Dementia Complex (ALS-PDC) has tended to find itself slightly isolated from the mainstream MND/ALS research world (‘isolated’ being a good word given that the location of the island itself) but I’ve had an interest since I was first introduced to the subject as a PhD student…
Reading Time: 5 minutes Dr Rachael A Dunlop, based at the University of Technology Sydney is interested in sporadic MND and the links to a toxin found in blue green algae. Here she writes about her research: Back in 1963, researchers descended into the jungles of the South Pacific island of Guam looking for the causes of a strange…
Reading Time: 3 minutes When you hear the word ‘cluster’ the first thing that comes to mind is probably a group of stars – not MND. During a plenary talk by Dr Ettore Beghi on Saturday 7 December the question was: ‘Is there anything we can learn from clusters in MND?’ What do we mean by clusters? Dr Beghi…
Reading Time: 4 minutes A toxin known as β-N-methylamino-l-alanine (BMAA), which is found in blue-green algae, has been shown to cause proteins inside cells to clump together and cause cell death. This finding suggests that BMAA may be a cause of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and MND and could lead to the development of new treatments. What is BMAA? BMAA is…
Reading Time: 4 minutes On Thursday morning, Profs Paul Cox and Walter Bradley chaired a session titled ‘Beyond Guam: New Aspects of the BMAA Hypothesis’. This was the latest chapter in a detective story, involving botanists, epidemiologists, clinicians and biochemists that goes back 60 years…. Back in the early 1950s, American doctors started documenting a high incidence of a…
