Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder characterized by progressive muscular paralysis reflecting degeneration of motor neurons in the primary motor cortex, corticospinal tracts, brainstem and spinal cord. The causes of ALS remain largely unknown more than 140 years after the disease was first described. The overall aims of this thesis were to describe t...

OBJECTIVE Previous research suggests that acetylcholinesterase (AChE) may be involved in ALS pathogenesis. AChE enzyme inhibitors can upregulate AChE transcription which in certain contexts can have deleterious (noncatalytic) effects, making them theoretically harmful in ALS, whilst AChE antisense-oligonucleotides (mEN101), which downregulate AChE may be beneficial. Our aim was to investigate w...

background: the rapidity of progression of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (als) to death or respiratory failure impacts patients, clinicians, and clinical investigators. the aim of this study is to evaluate of the pulmonary function tests (pfts) in patients with als and the association between these pfts and survival methods: a total of 36 als patients who pfts, including vital capacity (vc), ma...

BACKGROUND The acid-labile subunit (ALS) acts in the insulin-like growth (IGF) system by binding circulating IGF-I in a ternary complex with binding protein (IGFBP)-3 to prevent IGF-I from crossing the endothelial barrier. Given the role of the IGF system in prostate cancer, ALS may influence carcinogenesis by modulating IGF-I levels or bioavailability. METHODS We undertook a prospective stud...

Black-grass (Alopecurus myosuroides HUDS.) is a common weed of cereal crops widely spread in Northern Europe. Even if the first Belgian case of resistance was reported in 1996, until now, Belgium was quite spared of this problem and only a few restricted areas were concerned: the Polders, the marshland of the Escaut River and the Fosses-la-Ville region. About 90 seed samples were collected trou...