ALS causes and how they effect diagnosed patients

Paragraph 1 answers Questions 1-3. 

My most recent source is a CDC report on ALS. It was published on April 5, 2017. There is no known author but it is a reputable source from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. My oldest source is an academic journal titled What causes amyotrophic lateral sclerosis written by Sarah Martin, Ahmad Khleifat and Ammar Al-Chalabi. It was published online March 28, 2017. Published by F1000Research. It is also the source that comes from the most expert writer because it is an official report published by the CDC that explains important facts about ALS.

A lot of my sources tell me about the causes of the disease and the symptoms but there are so many different causes that can lead to ALS, so there are no universal, similar causes that explain how each patient got the disease. I’m researching the causes to find whether there are patients who have similar causes for their ALS diagnosis but since there is a variety of known causes I will elaborate on how many different environmental and biological factors can cause ALS. Some sources told me about the duration of the disease and how it affects those diagnosed with it. There was only a handful of sources that actually talk about how the patient’s livelihoods are affected by the disease. Some have to get caregivers after a couple of years, others need to pay for treatments, medicine and wheelchairs. They really gave me insight on how much a patient’s life changes once diagnosed.

Other sources told me about the many exams that have to be given to patients to actually diagnose ALS. Different sources had different exams listed for the diagnosis of ALS. There isn’t one test that doctors can use to determine if a person has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Instead, doctors need to perform a series of tests to eliminate other similar neurological diseases and to arrive at an ALS diagnosis. I think its weird that researchers don’t have research on how ALS patients’ lives are affected by the disease. I think the effects of the disease are just as important as the causes and symptoms. More research should be done about the effects so that patients can actually see what their lives might possibly be.

I can see that everyone is not on the same page about effective treatments for ALS. That could be because not enough treatments are being researched effectively, and it also takes years to see the long-term effects of treatments. There is a lack of common treatments that are being recommended to patients.