Did Lou Gehrig die from ALS or CTEM?

A recent study is questioning whether baseball player Lou Gehrig actually died of the disease that has come to bear his name or a very similar one which is connected  to multiple and repeated head injuries.

This study observed 12 athletes who had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTEM), and found out that three of them had symptoms similar to amyotophic lateral sclerosis, which is believed to be the disease that Lou Gehrig suffered from. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a disease that can not be treated and kills people by destroying their nervous system. Fortunately it is a very rare disease, and less than 6,000 people in the United States are diagnosed each year with it. As the disease advances, the patients lose their ability to control their muscles and eventually become completely paralyzed. The researchers from Boston University studied the brains and the spinal cords of 12 athletes who had CTE and found out that three of them has symptoms very much looking like ALS. The CTEM is believed to be caused by multiple head injuries in patients and playing sports that expose athletes to trauma to the head and the brain lead to symptoms that are also seen in ALS.

Dr. Robert Stern, one of the scientists that developed this study says that CTEM is a new disease, motor neuron disease which seems to be associated to head trauma. The study authors decided to call the newly identified disease chronic traumatic encephalomyopathy (CTEM). The study says that Wally Hillenburg and Eric Scoggins, two football players diagnosed with ALS, were actually suffering from CTE.  The question that they are rising now is if Gehrig suffered from ALS or CTEM. Gehrig had multiple head traumas when he was playing football at Columbia University and also when he was a baseball player. The scientists are not able to exhume Gehrig’s body and perform more research on him because he was cremated after death. The guess is that since he did not have had any cognitive or behavioral problems associated with CTEM it is more likely that Gehrig did have ALS.