Epidemiology of Motor-Neuron Diseases

Abstract

THE motor-neuron diseases as considered here include the clinical syndromes that have been shown to be due to primary abnormalities of anterior-horn cells and motor cranial-nerve nuclei. The term motor-neuron disease is used in a more restricted sense for the syndrome of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and the clinical components, progressive muscular atrophy and progressive bulbar palsy. Although these disorders have a similar pathologic substrate and clinical expression, they do not necessarily share the same causal factors. Some are clearly hereditary, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is sporadic in 95 per cent of cases.In recent years, the distinctions between the major . . .