Sporadic Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in patients with common geographical origin: a multidisciplinary study

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, a fatal neurodegenerative disorder, is object of intensive research since the causes are still unknown and a treatment still lacks. Thanks to the recent technological improvements, the current trend of studies on this pathology points toward the analysis of huge groups of patients, in the search of new causative genes or diagnostic biomarkers. Being a rare disease however, to recruit a big number of patients, is necessary to analyze simultaneously subjects originating from completely different areas, thus losing the chance to evaluate patients with a common environmental exposure. This PhD project is aimed to study a small cohort of ALS subjects originating from a restricted geographical area, with a multidisciplinary approach spanning from genetics to proteomics, to nutrition.