Over the last decade, research at Michigan Medicine has shown how exposure to toxins in the environment, such as pesticides and carcinogenic PCBs, affect the risk of developing and dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Now, investigators have developed an environmental risk score that assesses a person's risk for developing ALS, as well as for survival after diagnosis, using a blood sample. For the first time, we have a means collecting a tube of blood and looking at a person's risk for ALS based on being exposed to scores of toxins in the environment."
Researchers obtained over 250 blood samples from participants in Michigan both with and without ALS. They calculated individual risk and survival models using 36 persistent organic pollutants. When considering the mixture of these pollutants, a person who was in the highest group of exposure had twice the risk of developing ALS compared to someone in the lowest group of exposure.
The research team's first understanding of the environment's impact on ALS came in 2016 when investigators found elevated levels of pesticides in the blood of patients with the disease.
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