Understanding Motor Neurone Disease and Do Sportspeople More Likely to Be Diagnosed?

Motor neurone disease affects nerves located in the cerebrum and spinal cord, which tell your muscle tissue how to function.

This leads them to lose strength and stiffen gradually and usually affects how you walk, talk, eat and breathe.

It is a quite uncommon condition that is most common in people over 50, but grown-ups of any age can be impacted.

A person's lifetime risk of contracting MND is one in 300.

Approximately five thousand adults in the UK are living with the condition at any given moment.

Researchers are not sure what causes MND, but it is likely to be a combination of the genes - or biological traits - you get from your mother and father when you are born, and additional lifestyle factors.

For up to 10% of people with MND, particular genetic factors play a much larger role.

There is usually 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 identical signs, or encounters them in the same order.

The disease can progress at different speeds too.

Among the most common indicators are:

• muscle weakness and cramps
• rigid articulations
• problems with how you speak
• complications involving ingesting, consuming food and drinking
• weakened coughing

Does There Exist a Treatment?

No cure, but there is hope coming from treatments focused on different forms of MND.

MND is not one disease - it is actually multiple that culminate in the demise of nerve cells.

An innovative medication called tofersen is effective in only one in 50 individuals, however it has been shown to slow - and in some cases even undo - some of the manifestations of MND.

It has been described as "truly remarkable" and a "real moment of hope" for the whole disease.

Even though the medication has recently been approved in the European Union, it is not currently accessible in the UK.

Just one drug currently licensed for the management of MND in the UK and approved by the NHS.

Riluzole could decelerate the progression of the condition and prolong life by a few months, but it cannot repair damage.

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 most, the illness advances rapidly and life expectancy is just a few years.

Based on the charity MND Association, the disease kills a third of individuals within a twelve months and more than half within 24 months of identification.

As the neurons stop working, swallowing and breathing become more challenging and numerous individuals need nutritional support or respiratory aids to help them remain living.

Are Athletes At Greater Risk to Be Diagnosed?

The exact cause has not yet been found, but elite athletes seem disproportionately affected by MND.

A pair of research projects from 2005 and 2009 indicated that soccer players have an increased risk of developing MND.

A 2022 study by the Glasgow University involving four hundred ex- Scotland rugby union players concluded they had an increased risk of acquiring the condition.

Researchers additionally discovered that rugby players who have experienced multiple concussions have physiological variations that could render them more susceptible to developing MND.

The MND Association acknowledges there is a "link" between collision sports and MND.

It added that while the sportspeople studied were had a greater chance to acquire MND, it did not prove the athletic activities directly led to the disease.

The charity also stresses that "reported MND cases in this research is still relatively low, and so concluding there is a certain elevated chance could be misunderstood if this is merely a cluster due to statistical coincidence".

Multiple high-profile athletes have been diagnosed with the condition in recent years.

This encompasses former rugby union internationals, soccer players, and cricket athletes.

Across the Atlantic, baseball player Lou Gehrig succumbed to the disease at the age of 39.