Gene mutation may raise ALS risk
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
A mutation in a single gene may confer up to a 30% higher risk of getting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, offering a potential new target for drug research, Dutch scientists said this week. They said in the journal Nature Genetics that a variant in the DPP6 gene may give rise to ALS in people without a family susceptibility to the disease. Familial ALS, which accounts for 10% of ALS cases, has been linked with mutations in other genes.
