Autoimmune disease preceding amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: an epidemiologic study
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Updated: May 8, 2026

Real-Time Fluorescent Measurement of Synaptic Functions in Models of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
Published on: July 16, 2021
Martin R Turner1, Raph Goldacre, Sreeram Ramagopalan
1From the Oxford University Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences (M.R.T., K.T.), John Radcliffe Hospital; Oxford University Unit of Health-Care Epidemiology (R.G., M.J.G.), Department of Public Health; and Oxford University Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics (S.R.), Oxford, UK.
Objective:
To study whether the risk of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is increased in people with prior autoimmune disease.
Methods:
An all-England hospital record-linkage dataset spanning 1999-2011 was used. Cohorts were constructed of people with each of a range of autoimmune diseases; the incidence of ALS in each disease cohort was compared with the incidence of ALS in a cohort of individuals without prior admission for the autoimmune disease.
Results:
There were significantly more cases than expected of ALS associated with a prior diagnosis of asthma, celiac disease, younger-onset diabetes (younger than 30 years), multiple sclerosis, myasthenia gravis, myxedema, polymyositis, Sjögren syndrome, systemic lupus erythematosus, and ulcerative colitis.
Conclusions:
Autoimmune disease associations with ALS raise the possibility of shared genetic or environmental risk factors.
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