Dwight Clark (former 49ers receiver) says he has ALS, suspects football a cause

[mountaineer]

Dwight Clark says he has ALS, suspects football a cause
March 20, 2017

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Dwight Clark revealed Sunday that he has Lou Gehrig's disease and suspects playing football might have caused the illness.

Clark announced on Twitter that he has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease that attacks cells that control muscles. The former San Francisco 49ers wide receiver linked to a post on his personal blog detailing his ALS diagnosis, but the site crashed Sunday night, apparently from an overflow of traffic.

"I've been asked if playing football caused this," Clark said in the post. "I don't know for sure. But I certainly suspect it did."

The 60-year-old Clark wrote that he began experiencing symptoms in September 2015. He's lost significant strength in his left hand and also has weakness in his right hand, midsection, lower back and right leg.

"I can't run, play golf or walk any distances," he said. "Picking up anything over 30 pounds is a chore. The one piece of good news is that the disease seems to be progressing more slowly than in some patients."

Clark won two Super Bowls with the 49ers during a nine-year career that ended in 1987.  ...

EXCERPTED: Rest of story at Post-Gazette

[mountaineer]

Did concussions play role in Lou Gehrig's disease?
By Stephanie Smith, CNN
August 17, 2010 8:21 p.m. EDT


    Repeated concussions may be risk factor for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
    Scientists found abnormal protein in brain, spinal cord of 3 pro athletes who had ALS
    The athletes had all suffered repeated head trauma
    Gehrig also had multiple concussions

(CNN) -- With his head bowed and a barely detectable quiver in his voice, the baseball player known as the "Iron Horse" devastated the crowd at Yankee Stadium, not by hitting a home run, but by announcing that he was dying.

It was July 4, 1939, and Lou Gehrig, a first baseman for the New York Yankees, had reached the end of a storied career.

"Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got," said Gehrig, who during his career played 2,130 consecutive games and still holds the record for the most grand slams. "Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth."

Gehrig's words were chilling considering his diagnosis: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. ALS is a rare, incurable neurodegenerative disease (eventually named after him) that first manifests as muscle weakness and quickly descends to paralysis, an inability to breathe and death.

More than 70 years after his speech, a new, small study in the Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology may have unlocked a tantalizing clue about Gehrig's illness -- one that could be connected to his history of concussions.

"He did have three or four major concussions that landed him in the hospital," said Dr. Ann McKee, associate professor of Neurology and Pathology at the Boston University School of Medicine. "It is interesting to speculate that they may have contributed to his ALS."

McKee, along with colleagues at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at the Boston University School of Medicine, discovered an abnormal protein in the brain and spinal cord of two former professional football players -- both diagnosed with ALS before they died -- and a former boxer. All of them had a history of repeated head trauma.

"When we looked at these three individuals, they had this hideous abnormal protein called TDP-43," said McKee, director of Neuropathology at the Bedford VA Medical Center. "Large amounts in the spinal cord and brain."

TDP-43 is associated with a handful of motor neuron diseases, including ALS. It is found in the nucleus of cells in the nervous system. McKee said that among the brains she examined, TDP-43 had leaked out of the nucleus, infiltrating the brain and spinal cord.

It is an intriguing possibility and at the same time a huge leap at this early scientific juncture to suggest causality -- that somehow a concussion could cause a degenerative motor neuron disease. Still, study authors were intrigued by the possibility of a common thread between the three athletes' brains, motor neuron disease symptoms they exhibited before dying, and Gehrig's own motor neuron disease. ...

Full story at CNN

[TomSea]

Just posting from the Washington Post, I'm not ragging on football. I'm not sure if it was posted here, but there was a pro-NFL player who announced his retirement from football last week and he is only about 28 years old and he said it was because of 4 concussions he had suffered. Something along those lines. Probably posted here.

Excerpt:

Gale Sayers and Dwight Clark, NFL legends with bad diagnoses, ‘suspect’ football is to blame

“Like the doctor at the Mayo Clinic said, ‘Yes, a part of this has to be on football,’ ” Gale Sayers’s wife, Ardie, told Vahe Gregorian of the Kansas City Star. “ … It wasn’t so much getting hit in the head … It’s just the shaking of the brain when they took him down with the force they play the game in.”

Sayers’s wife does most of the public speaking for him as his memories recede, day by day. Now 73, the youngest player inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame is, she says, healthy “as a horse,” working out with a trainer and playing golf. But the problem, as Ardie Sayers told Gregorian, is “that brain controls everything, doesn’t it?”

After a brief stay in a facility, Sayers is now at his home with Ardie in Wakarusa, Ind., as she and in-home health professionals work with him on things as simple as signing his name.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/03/20/gale-sayers-and-dwight-clark-nfl-legends-with-bad-diagnoses-suspect-football-is-to-blame/?utm_term=.3deaebbd7aee

@mountaineer

[mountaineer]

I believe there was a thread here sometime last year about the CTE and football connection*.  Whether head injuries contribute to ALS also is a mystery.

*Here's one of the related threads.

[Variant]

Hopefully someday we'll find out whether or not football is a risky sport and notify those choosing to participate in it of the dangers.