The latest twist in a more than 60-year-old medical mystery suggests a brain toxin once thought to be a threat only to a handful of western Pacific populations may be a ubiquitous environmental hazard.
The provocative finding suggests that 
-N-methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA), a neurotoxin produced by blue-green algae and implicated in the development of severe neurodegenerative disease in a few populations, might play a broader role in the development of Alzheimer disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and Parkinson disease (Cox et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005;102:5074-5078).
BEYOND GUAM?
BMAA has been associated with an unusually high number of cases of ALS/parkinsonism-dementia complex (ALS-PDC) in three distinct western Pacific populations, most notably the Chamorro people of Guam. Prior to the newly published report, scientists believed that the toxin was produced only by blue-green algae, also called cyanobacteria, that live symbiotically in the . . . [Full Text of this Article]
