Environmental health factors for motor neuron disease

Abstract

Motor Neurone Disease (MND) is a progressive disease and once the symptoms are jointly evident enough to allow diagnosis, MND is a rapidly terminal disease. A plausible mechanism is the enhanced Apoptosis of the Motor Neurones leading to the loss of skeletal muscular control and strength. This has led to the development of a hypothesis that attempts to explain the overall evidence pattern, including the seasonal MND related birth peak in Spring, the familial and occupational MND associations. The hypothesis proposes that the development of MND is based on a variable initial volume of Motor Neurons and the development of the disease through the enhanced cumulative Apoptosis rates over people’s life-time, leading to premature loss of the Motor Neuron muscular control and premature death primarily through lung failure. The cumulative life-time damage from exposure to environmental neurotoxins, stressful activity that reduces sleep quality and melatonin, heavy work load periods, antioxidant levels in diets, are a complex set of factors that can enhance the Motor Neurone Apoptosis rate. This is connected to the lack of CNS neuron regeneration. The associated environmental neurotoxin effects include those from heavy metals, smoking, agricultural chemicals, water and air pollution toxic chemicals and genotoxic electromagnetic fields. The ubiquitous nature of any associated substance, especially dioxin and electromagnetic fields, suggests that they are the largest general population risk factor. Electromagnetic fields and some toxic chemicals have been found to pass cancer on to children from mother and/or father’s exposures. This supports a genotoxic mechanism that is supported by many studies showing chromosome damage and DNA strand breakage. These disease agents are likely to reduce the initial Motor Neuron Volume and/or advance the rate of development of Motor Neuron Disease through enhanced Apoptosis rates. Reducing the general population's exposure to environmental and residential genotoxic and neurotoxic substances is likely to be associated with a significant reduction in the incidence of MND in future generations.