Importance of nutrition and weight loss in motor neuron disease

Published on December 31, 2023   21 min

A selection of talks on Neurology

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0:00
Welcome to the talk on the importance of nutrition and weight in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis motor neuron disease. I have a PhD and working as an Inserm research director in Strasbourg, France.
0:17
Why do we say that weight loss is important in ALS? Because ALS has actually a component that is related to metabolism. Weight loss in ALS is caused by multiple factors, but two of these are actually the most important ones. One is decreased food intake, which is particularly related to dysphasia that occurs during disease progression and the other one is increased energy expenditure- both of them might be related to altered hypothalamic signaling. I hope that in this talk I will convince you that the hypothalamus is actually instrumental in weight loss in ALS patients and that dietary intervention and in particular high caloric, high-fat diet might be important in terms of therapeutic counseling.
1:14
Another component of ALS is related to energy metabolism and is actually systemic. There are pathological abnormalities in ALS tissues beyond the classical origins of the CNS that are involved in ALS. For instance, the hypothalamus is atrophied, there are TDP-43 aggregates, especially in the lateral hypothalamic area, and there are impairments of various hypothalamic signaling, including melanocortin. In the pancreas, there have been reports of impaired insulin secretion. In the adipose tissue, the tissue has been atrophied and is abnormally distributed as compared to healthy controls. Skeletal muscle shows increased lipid usage, impaired glucose usage, and mitochondrial dysfunction.

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Importance of nutrition and weight loss in motor neuron disease

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