Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
My name is Antony Rizk and I am a senior at UIUC studying MCB and Kinesiology. I have a deep interest in genetics and as a result for this course in IB 364 I had to choose a disease to study and find a gene that is stongly associated with it. So, that landed me with Amyotrophic Lateral sclerosis (ALS) and a gene that is strongly related to this disease which is Superoxide dismutase 1. I have shadowed with a neurosurgeon before and I myself want to be an orthopedic surgeon, so I was interested in really understanding this disease as I have an extra interest in a disorder that affects the nervous and musculoskeletal system. ALS was often referred to as Lou Gherrigs disease after the famous baseball player died from it two years after being diagnosed. It is a neurodegenerative diseases that affects the motor neurons in the spinal cord, nerves and brain. To this day the average rate of diagnosis is about 5 per 100,000 people which makes it a relatively rare disease, but still doe...