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Comment by deltaonefour | Hacker News Reader

The commonality between those effected may be the causative factor. If that same commonality is missing from those less effected it's even more supporting evidence.

In the set you presented. The only people who have increased risk of ALS are those that play sports on grass fields. Maybe that's the key? Grass.

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"Ticks love to be in moist, low grass, so a lot of games, whether it's football, baseball, tend to happen in the morning. There may be dew on the grass and that's where a lot of ticks survive and hang out," Nesheiwat said.

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/ticks-lyme-disease-cdc-...

Lots of anecdotal evidence of ALS developing after tick bites, or more concretely infection with Borrelia Burgdorferi.

Probably a genetic component, and other enviromental factors are also involved, but the only dramatic reversals of MND I have seen documented (or heard about) have been either with IV antibiotics [1][3], or years of Mercury chelation [2]

[1] https://invisibledisabilities.org/award-recipients/2011award...

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17212618/

[2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317849075_Healing_o...

In the recent book "Chronic" by Dr. Stephen Philips, he's frustrated since he can only treat successfully (outcome similar to Dr. Martz), with antibiotics, about 15% of his ALS-like patients. Considering how uniformly fatal ALS diagnosis is otherwise, even considering how skewed of a sample he might get (patients that already know they are Lyme positive or suspect it), still find it astonishing.

Thanks for those links! Re antibiotics, do those end up in the spinal fluid and brain in „useful“ amounts?

Depends on the antibiotic. I believe their molecular mass has to be lower than around 500 Da for them to reliably cross the blood brain barrier. It also depend whether meningeal inflammation is present or not

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