Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in Beijing: Epidemiologic features and prognosis from 2010 to 2015

OBJECTIVE: To determine the incidence of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in Beijing from 2010 to 2015 and to address the issue of prognosis. METHODS: The number of patients diagnosed with ALS was generated from two aspects, namely, diagnostic hospitals and assisted care institutions. By examining the consistency of the overlapping data in terms of age and gender distributions, the number of ALS patients in Beijing was estimated to analyze the incidence. Finally, a prognosis study was carried out by sorting the clinical data of deceased patients to associate time to death with the demographic characteristics, including gender, age at diagnosis, site of onset, body mass index, and lag from onset to diagnosis. RESULTS: The average yearly incidence was 0.8/100,000 persons, the male–female ratio was 1.63:1, and the mean age at diagnosis was 54.11 years. The mean time from symptom onset to diagnosis was 14.8 months, and the median survival time from diagnosis was 49.4 months. In addition, each of the identified clinical features was related to the survival of the patients with ALS. CONCLUSIONS: The incidence of ALS in Beijing is similar to the rates in Hong Kong and Taiwan but is lower than the rates in Europe and America. In addition, the mean age at onset of the patients in Beijing was early, and overall ALS prognosis appears to be comparable to those reported in recent publications.