ABOUT three years ago, we investigated a family constellation in which several members were believed to have died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). We performed a number of clinical biochemical determinations on ten unaffected blood relatives in the hope of discovering possible abnormalities which might have some relation to the disease process.
One of the procedures was column chromatographic analysis of serum amino acids. The only noteworthy observation we made was that the fasting serum arginine level appeared to be lower than normal in four of the ten individuals tested, according to the normal ranges given by Westall.1 Although we know that this might not be clinically or statistically significant, it led us to investigate the possible role of arginine in ALS. Our preliminary results are presented in this article.
Methods
Chromatographic Analysis.—
All amino acid analyses referred to in this paper were carried out by the following