Abstract
While rising global rates of neurodegenerative disease encourage early diagnosis and therapeutic intervention to block clinical expression (secondary prevention), a more powerful approach is to identify and remove environmental factors that trigger long-latencybrain disease (primary prevention) by acting on a susceptible genotype or acting alone. The latter is illustrated by the post-World War II decline and disappearance of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Parkinsonism-Dementia Complex (ALS/PDC), a prototypical often-familial neurodegenerative disease formerly present in very high incidence on the island of Guam. Lessons learned from 75 years of investigation on the etiology of ALS/PDC include: the importance of focusing field research on the disease epicenter and patients with early-onset disease; soliciting exposure history from patients, family, and community to guide multidisciplinary biomedical investigation; recognition that disease phenotype may vary with exposure history, and that familial brain disease may have a primarily environmental origin. Furthermore, removal from exposure to the environmental trigger effects primary disease prevention.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Article number | 123340 |
Journal | Journal of the Neurological Sciences |
Volume | 468 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 15 2025 |
Keywords
- Alzheimer's disease
- Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
- Disease clusters
- Lifetime exposome
- Parkinson's disease
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Neurology
- Clinical Neurology