Abstract

Juvenile ALS (jALS) is a rare form of ALS, defined as symptom onset before age 25. This report describes the demographic characteristics of confirmed and likely jALS cases in a large cohort of ALS patients ascertained in the National ALS Registry (Registry) from 2010 to 2018. Patients in the Registry must be at least 18 years of age. Of the 44 identified patients, 37.8% were diagnosed at age 24, were more likely to be nonwhite (54.5%), male (79.5%), and live in the Midwest or Northeast regions (54.5%) of the US. Some 68.9% of the jALS cases were received from federal administrative databases, and 16% came from the web portal only. Demographic characteristics for jALS cases in the Registry differed from previous publications examining ALS cases for all adults. More research is needed to better understand risk factors contributing to jALS, which could lead to earlier diagnosis and therapeutic interventions.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

Notes/Citation Information

This is an Open Access article that has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/). You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1080/21678421.2023.2264922

Funding Information

This work was supported by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation.

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