Prospective study of military service and mortality from ALS
Abstract
Background Two recent studies suggest that the risk of ALS is increased among Gulf War veterans. It is not known whether military service outside of the Gulf War is associated with increased risk of ALS. Methods The authors prospectively assessed the relation between service in the military and ALS mortality among participants in the Cancer Prevention Study II cohort of the American Cancer Society, a cohort that includes over 500,000 men from the 50 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico. Participant follow-up was conducted from 1989 through 1998 for ALS mortality. There were a total of 280 deaths from ALS among 126,414 men who did not serve in the military and 281,874 who did. Adjusted relative risks (RRs) were calculated using Mantel-Haenszel weights and Cox proportional hazards. Results Men who served in the military had an increased death rate from ALS (RR = 1.53; 95% CI: 1.12 to 2.09; p = 0.007) compared with those who did not serve. The increase in ALS mortality was observed among men who served in the Army or National Guard (RR = 1.54), Navy (RR = 1.87), Air Force (RR = 1.54), and Coast Guard (RR = 2.24); no increase in risk was found in men who served in the Marine Corps, although there were only 13,670 men in this group. The risk of ALS among men who served was elevated in every 5-year birth cohort from 1915 through 1939. Conclusions Military personnel have an increased risk of ALS. This increase appeared to be largely independent of the branch of service and the ti…
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
There are reports of a potentially increased risk of ALS in US veterans.
“Following reports of a potentially increased risk of ALS in US veterans (23–25), we are currently conducting a case-control study called GENEVA”
From Association of ALS with head injury, cigarette smoking and APOE genotypes (2010) · cites this paper as [25]
Cites
(1997) · JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association · doi:10.1001/jama.1997.03540270064028 · Cited by 396 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
TDP-43 proteinopathy and motor neuron disease in chronic traumatic encephalopathy
McKee, A. C., Gavett, B. E., Stern, R. A., Nowinski, C. J., Cantu, R. C., Kowall, N. W., Perl, D. P., Hedley-Whyte, E. T., Price, B., Sullivan, C., et al. (2010) · Journal of Neuropathology & Experimental Neurology · doi:10.1097/nen.0b013e3181ee7d85 · Cited by 659 · see citing works
Wang, M.-D., Little, J., Gomes, J., Cashman, N. R., & Krewski, D. (2017) · NeuroToxicology · doi:10.1016/j.neuro.2016.06.015 · Cited by 233 · see citing works
ALS in Italian professional soccer players: The risk is still present and could be soccer-specific
Chiò, A., Calvo, A., Dossena, M., Ghiglione, P., Mutani, R., & Mora, G. (2009) · Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis · doi:10.1080/17482960902721634 · Cited by 180 · see citing works
Association of ALS with head injury, cigarette smoking and APOE genotypes
Schmidt, S., Kwee, L. C., Allen, K. D., & Oddone, E. Z. (2010) · Journal of the Neurological Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.jns.2010.01.011 · Cited by 117 · see citing works
Prevalence of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), United States, 2016
Mehta, P., Raymond, J., Punjani, R., Larson, T., Bove, F., Kaye, W., Nelson, L. M., Topol, B., Han, M., Muravov, O., et al. (2022) · Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Frontotemporal Degeneration · doi:10.1080/21678421.2021.1949021 · Cited by 84 · see citing works
Gulf War Illness: Lessons from medically unexplained symptoms
Iversen, A., Chalder, T., & Wessely, S. (2007) · Clinical Psychology Review · doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2007.07.006 · Cited by 66 · see citing works
Head injury does not alter disease progression or neuropathologic outcomes in ALS
Fournier, C. N., Gearing, M., Upadhyayula, S. R., Klein, M., & Glass, J. D. (2015) · Neurology · doi:10.1212/wnl.0000000000001522 · Cited by 44 · see citing works
Watanabe, Y., & Watanabe, T. (2017) · European Journal of Epidemiology · doi:10.1007/s10654-017-0327-y · Cited by 27 · see citing works
Beaudin, M., Salachas, F., Pradat, P.-F., & Dupré, N. (2022) · Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Frontotemporal Degeneration · doi:10.1080/21678421.2022.2028167 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
- Authors
- Weisskopf, M. G., O’Reilly, E. J., McCullough, M. L., Calle, E. E., Thun, M. J., Cudkowicz, M., & Ascherio, A.
- Affiliations
- From the Departments of Nutrition (Drs. Weisskopf and Ascherio, E.J. O’Reilly), Environmental Health (Dr. Weisskopf), and Epidemiology (Dr. Ascherio), Harvard School of Public Health, Channing Laboratory (Dr. Ascherio), Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Neurology Clinical Trial Unit (Dr. Cudkowicz), Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, and Epidemiology and Surveillance Research (Drs. McCullough, Calle, and Thun),...
- Venue
- Neurology
- Published
- 2005-01-11
- Volume
- 64
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 32-37
- ISSN
- 0028-3878
- 1526-632X
- Cited by
- 160
- References
- 1
- Language
- en
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
