Valley News - Mascoma Lake

Published 6/9/09
Disease Cluster Found at Lake
Researchers Seek Link Between Mascoma ALS, Algae
By John P. Gregg and John Woodrow Cox
Valley News Staff Writer
Enfield -- Researchers with Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center have identified a potentially significant cluster of Lou Gehrig's disease cases around Mascoma Lake.
Working with a team of other researchers, they are trying to determine if the cluster, and smaller ones like it in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine, can be linked to certain algae blooms that produce a neurotoxin that may trigger the disease.
They also noted that the link, if one can be found, would likely involve long-term exposure to the neurotoxin by people with a genetic predisposition to the disease, officially known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.
Nine people living near Mascoma Lake have been diagnosed with ALS since 1990, all but one between 2000 and 2006. Three of them were in 2006, according to Elijah Stommel, a DHMC neurologist who has been mapping cases of the disease in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine.
“There's clearly a cluster of ALS around that lake,” Stommel said in a phone interview yesterday. “I want to be really clear that we don't have any strong link at this point … I don't think there’s any cause for alarm.”
ALS is a progressive, often fatal neurodegenerative disease that attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, leading to muscle weakness and atrophy, according to the ALS Association.
The incidence of ALS in the United States is about two per 100,000 people. The Dartmouth team has determined that the incidence of ALS cases can double for people living near waterways with cyanobacteria blooms.
The Mascoma Lake prevalence is about 25 times greater than national norms, he said.
Three cases of ALS also were mapped near Kennedy Pond in Windsor, Stommel said.
“We've found a few hotspots in Vermont as well,” he said.
Stommel -- collaborating with researchers from University of New Hampshire, the Wyoming-based Institute for Ethnomedicine and the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services -- hopes to determine whether the ALS cases near Mascoma and other smaller clusters are related to outbreaks of cyanobacteria.

See the full story at the Valley News website.