Researchers find clues linking ALS and autoimmune responses

Researchers have found that patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis have autoimmune responses, a finding with the potential to reshape how scientists think of the devastating and complex neurologic disorder.

A team led by scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology analyzed blood samples from 40 ALS patients and 28 people without the disease. They found that those with ALS had on average stronger immune cell responses than healthy controls to C9orf72, a protein active in neurons and associated with the rare condition. Other proteins linked to ALS, however, were not preferentially targeted by patients’ immune systems.

The authors discovered that, among patients with responses against C9orf72, those with immune cells that produced signals known to tamp down inflammation were predic