News
A toxin present in blue-green algae and consumed by sealife may be a cause of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease and other neurological diseases in humans who ingest contaminated water or seafood, according to research conducted by Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center neurologist Elijah Stommel.
Stommel's research, which began in 2000, is still ongoing and was recently featured in Discover Magazine.
Beta-methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA), a compound found in cyanobacteria such as blue-green algae, has been thought to cause neurological defects since the 1960s, when foods containing the compound were linked to a neurological disease outbreak in Guam.
Stommel and students at Dartmouth Medical School plotted the addresses of about 800 ALS patients onto a computer map of northern New England and found that they were heavily concentrated around lakes and other bodies of water.