EXPERTS SAY SMOKING
LIKELY RISK FACTOR FOR ALS
Smoking is probably a risk factor for developing ALS,
experts say.
Carmel Armon, chief of the Division of Neurology at Baystate
Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., recently told Neurology
Today that accumulated evidence shows that smoking is “more
likely than not” linked to ALS development.
Greg Carter, who co-directs the MDA/ALS Center at the University
of Washington in Seattle, notes that such a link was first reported
four years ago in a study conducted in Washington state, and that
the new data appear to support this link.
The initial finding, published in the Jan. 15, 2000, issue of
the American Journal of Epidemiology, was based on information
gathered from people with and without ALS in Washington between
1990 and 1994.
Epidemiologist Lorene Nelson, who left the University of Washington
for Stanford (Calif.) University in 1992, worked on that study,
as did UW neurologist W.T. Longstreth Jr., with Valerie McGuire
and Chantal Matkin from Stanford’s Department of Health
Research and Policy.
The UW-Stanford group reported that having ever smoked cigarettes
was associated with twice the risk of developing ALS, while current
smokers ran more than three times the risk of getting ALS compared
to nonsmokers.
