Work

Severe head injury and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Year: 2013

Type: article

Abstract: Our objective was to examine whether severe head injury, subtypes of head injury, or repeated head injuries are associated with ALS risk based on the Swedish population and health registers. We conducted a case-control study, nested within a cohort of 5,764,522 individuals who were born in Sweden during 1901-1970 and followed between 1991 and 2007. The study included 4004 ALS patients identified from the Swedish Patient Register during follow-up and 20,020 randomly selected controls matched by gender and birth year. We evaluated hospitalization for severe head injury that was recorded in the inpatient register before ALS diagnosis. Conditional logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Results showed that there was an association of ALS risk with severe head injury ≤ 1 year before diagnosis (OR: 3.9, 95% CI 2.6-6.1). No association was observed for severe head injury > 3 years before ALS diagnosis, nor was ALS associated with subtypes of head injury or repeated injuries occurring > 3 years before diagnosis. In conclusion, our findings from the Swedish registers provide no strong support for an etiological relationship between severe head injury in adulthood and ALS risk.

Source: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Frontotemporal Degeneration

DOI: 10.3109/21678421.2012.754043

Authors: Tracy L. Peters, Fang Fang, Caroline E. Weibull, Dale P. Sandler, Freya Kamel, Weimin Ye

Institutions: Karolinska Institutet, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

Language: English

Topic: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Research

Subfield: Neurology

Field: Medicine

Domain: Health Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: green

Funder: National Institutes of Health