This is one of the most unusual research findings I have ever encountered. From the American Journal of Epidemiology:
Between 1987 and 2005, the authors conducted a case-control study nested within the entire Swedish population to investigate whether loss of a child due to death is associated with the risk of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The study comprised 2,694 incident ALS cases and five controls per case individually matched by year of birth, gender, and parity. Odds ratios and their corresponding 95% confidence intervals for ALS were estimated by using conditional logistic regression models. Compared with that for parents who never lost a child, the overall odds ratio of ALS for bereaved parents was 0.7 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.6, 0.8) and decreased to 0.4 (95% CI: 0.2, 0.8) 11–15 years after the loss. The risk reduction was also modified by parental age at the time of loss, with the lowest odds ratio of 0.4 (95% CI: 0.2, 0.9) for parents older than age 75 years. Loss of a child due to malignancy appeared to confer a lower risk of ALS (odds ratio = 0.5, 95% CI: 0.3, 0.8) than loss due to other causes. These data indicate that the risk of developing ALS decreases following the severe stress of parental bereavement. Further studies are needed to explore potential underlying mechanisms.
I would love to learn how the authors decided to look into this. There are a variety of “stress is good for you” results (e.g., low calorie intake increases rat longevity) but this is the most puzzling.
It would just seem that there are different kinds of stress, which may even release different hormones. The stress of hunger can actually be benificial to the body, while the stress of grief for a loved one can be harmful. It would seem to make sense.
Fascinating. If there’s research on this, one would expect there to be research determining the overall mortality and morbidity effects of losing a child. Everything I’ve ever seen, from literature to clinical observations says losing a child is the most painful grief one can experience.
Surely it correlates with depression, which is known to correlate with heart disease… But all this correlation stuff is one big guessing game…
Perhaps the death of a child causes an increased focus on the body’s fragility, leading to better care of one’s health, diet, exercise?
“Perhaps the death of a child causes an increased focus on the body’s fragility, leading to better care of one’s health, diet, exercise?”
All I can say is “not hardly.” I’ve known a lot of parents who went through the death of a child. None of them took better care of themselves for years, if ever. Took me, I’d say almost ten years from the last death before I really started to take care of myself at all, I’m still not to pre-death levels of care.
I should have been able to figure that out…apologies for the witless remark.
Calorie restriction makes just about every degenerative disease less common–except for ALS. So maybe something that increases the genetic risk of cancer decreases the risk of ALS?
No apologies necessary.
Hi Seth–
I think this ALS/stress study is related to a long series of similar studies that have been conducted in Scandinavia. For example, Cancer incidence in parents who lost a child: a nationwide study in Denmark (Cancer 2002;95:2237-42). The conclusion was that the death of a child is associated with a slightly increased overall cancer risk in mothers, mostly due to smoking-related malignancies. Since people often smoke as a way to reduce stress, that’s not surprising. A follow-on study showed that cancer survival in the child-loss cohort isn’t impaired. Separate studies have looked at heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis and some others. The bereaved cohort had a greater risk of myocardial infarction, again mostly due to stress-related behaviors such as drinking alcohol and smoking. They also had a greater risk of MS, but for RA and IBD there was no difference. The ALS finding is especially interesting compared to the increased MS risk. The expectation would be that if stress increases the risk of one neurodegenerative disease it would increase the risk of others, but maybe not.