Understanding Motor Neurone Disease and Are Athletes More Likely to Receive a Diagnosis?
Motor neurone disease impacts nerves found in the brain and spine, which tell your muscles what to do.
This leads them to lose strength and become rigid gradually and typically impacts how you walk, talk, eat and breathe.
It is a relatively rare condition that is most common in individuals above age fifty, but grown-ups of all ages can be impacted.
A person's lifetime risk of developing MND is 1 out of 300.
About five thousand adults in the UK are living with the condition at any one time.
Researchers are uncertain what causes MND, but it is likely to be a mix of the genetic material - or inherited characteristics - you get from your parents when you are delivered, and other lifestyle factors.
For up to one in 10 individuals with MND, specific genes play a much larger role.
Typically there is a family history of the disease in such instances.
What are the Early Symptoms of the Condition?
MND affects everyone differently.
Not everyone has the same symptoms, or encounters them in the same order.
The condition can advance at varying rates too.
Some of the most common signs are:
- loss of muscle strength and muscle spasms
- rigid articulations
- problems with your speech
- complications involving ingesting, consuming food and taking fluids
- reduced cough reflex
Is There a Treatment?
No cure, but there is hope coming from therapies targeted at various types of MND.
MND is not one disease - it is actually several that result in the demise of nerve cells.
A new drug known as tofersen works in only one in 50 individuals, however it has been shown to slow - and in certain instances even undo - a portion of the manifestations of MND.
It has been described as "truly remarkable" and a "real moment of optimism" for the entire condition.
Even though the drug has recently been approved in the EU, it is not yet available in the UK.
Just one drug currently licensed for the management of MND in the UK and approved by the NHS.
Riluzole may slow down the progression of the condition and increase survival by several months, but it does not reverse harm.
What is Life Expectancy for MND?
Certain individuals can live for many years with MND, including theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who was diagnosed at the age of 22 and lived to 76.
But for the majority, the illness advances rapidly and survival time is just a few years.
Based on the charity MND Association, the condition kills a third of individuals within a year and more than half within 24 months of diagnosis.
As the nerve cells cease functioning, swallowing and breathing become increasingly difficult and numerous individuals need nutritional support or breathing apparatus to help them stay alive.
Are Athletes More Likely to Be Diagnosed?
The precise reason has not been identified, but elite athletes seem overrepresented by MND.
A pair of research projects from 2005 and 2009 indicated that soccer players have an increased risk of developing MND.
Research from 2022 by the Glasgow University involving four hundred former Scotland rugby athletes concluded they had an increased risk of acquiring the condition.
Scientists additionally discovered that rugby athletes who have experienced multiple concussions have biological differences that may make them more prone to developing MND.
The MND Association recognizes there is a "link" between collision sports and MND.
It added that while the sportspeople researched were more likely to acquire MND, it did not show the sports directly caused the condition.
The organization also stresses that "documented MND cases in this research is remains quite small, and so determining there is a definite increased risk could be misunderstood if this is simply a cluster due to statistical coincidence".
Multiple prominent sports figures have been diagnosed with the condition in the past few years.
These include former rugby union internationals, footballers, and cricketers.
In the United States, MLB athlete Lou Gehrig succumbed to the disease at the age of 39.
