Question

In your brief opinion as a physiologist, why can some patients survive more than 5 years with ALS?

Answer 1

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a neurodegenerative disease that affects the upper and lower motor neurons and results in muscular weakness. The muscular weakness causes slow progressing difficulty with functional abilities of an individual such as walking, speech, swallowing, arms and leg weakness.
ALS cannot be cured and the life expectancy For a person with ALS is five years. But some people have shown a higher life expectancy. ALS patients usually die due to respiratory failure as a result of diaphragm paralysis. So if the motor neurons controlling the diaphragm muscle are spared, the patient can sustain. ALS is a progressive disease that slowly destroys the UMN and LMN. In some patients this progression can be vert very slow resulting in a longer life span than expected.