About 30 residents, including some who have been diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, were updated recently on a research project to identify a link between the area’s toxic algal blooms and ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
The presentation, titled “Spatial and Temporal Correlations Between ALS risk and Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Blooms,” was held Wednesday, April 24, and hosted by Albemarle Regional Health Services Director Ashley Stoop and Duke University research professor Dr. Lisa Satterwhite. The hour-long discussion was held in the community room of the Pasquotank County Center of N.C. Cooperative Extension and included information from Stoop, Satterwhite and two Duke University third-year medical students.
ARHS announced last September that it had partnered with Satterwhite and other researchers at Duke to investigate potential links between northeastern North Carolina’s unusually high rate of ALS cases and potential toxic blue-green algal blooms found in local waterways.
“Are we hopeful that we can figure all of this out? Absolutely,” said Stoop. “But if nothing else we just want to get a few steps closer” to understanding these potential links.
Researchers are also hoping the project will lead to ways of diagnosing ALS much sooner in a patient’s life. They are hopeful they’ll also be able to identify links between the algal blooms and other neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
The typical prevalence rate of ALS cases across North Carolina is about 5 per 100,000 of the population, and the population in the eight counties served by ARHS is about 160,000, Stoop said.
Yet, she said, with assistance from the Jim “Catfish” Hunter ALS Foundation in Hertford, ARHS identified more than 40 cases of ALS in northeastern North Carolina between 1999 and 2019.
“That’s not an official registry,” Stoop said, suggesting there could be more cases in that period that were not found.
Furthermore, many of those cases were patients who lived near the Albemarle Sound or its tributaries.
Stoop pointed to a map of North Carolina that showed the number of ALS cases over a significant time span.
“And you’ve got the vast majority of them right here,” she said, pointing to northeastern North Carolina.
Stoop grew up in Hertford and knew Jim “Catfish” Hunter, a Major League Baseball Hall of Fame inductee who died of ALS in Hertford in 1999.
According to Stoop, the Perquimans Board of Commissioners adopted a resolution in 2019 urging health officials to examine why there were so many cases of ALS in the region. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic the following year delayed the start of the research project till last September.
Blue-green algal blooms are caused by cyanobacteria and may carry toxins that can cause serious health issues for humans and animals. The blooms have been spotted across Albemarle area waterways from Chowan County to Elizabeth City over the last several years.
Last July, the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality issued a warning to residents in Chowan County to keep away from the Chowan River between Tyner and Edenton because of blue-green algal blooms.
“The algal blooms can have immediate toxic effects,” said Stoop. “They can be extremely harmful to children.”
Another question researchers hope to answer is why so many algal blooms are turning up in area waterways.
Stoop pointed to a chart that represented the number of confirmed algal blooms around the Albemarle Sound from 2012-19.
“And you can see our area is inundated with them,” she said.
And in 2022, according to Stoop, the N.C. DEQ confirmed the presence of five “highly toxic” blooms on the Little River and Chowan River.
One suspect for the bloom rate is the region’s climate, which has seen water surface temperatures rise and significant rainfall in the last several years, Stoop said. Plus, the region has longer periods of warm weather.
“We didn’t really have a cold winter. … All of that encourages those blooms,” she said.
The research initiative is being conducted on two fronts. The first includes a campaign to educate residents within ARHS’ service area about the health hazards of algal blooms and how to identify and report them.
The second step involves a study of blood samples collected over a period of time from both residents who live in northeastern North Carolina and those who live outside the region.
Stoop said that the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission has posted warning signs at all of the region’s public wildlife and boating access locations. The signs include a QR code that residents can scan, plus information to report possible algal bloom sightings.
According to Satterwhite, who is an assistant research professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke University, researchers hope to study the blood samples for biomarkers that indicate if a person is prone to developing ALS or other neurological diseases caused by environmental factors.
Thus far the research has been conducted using several past years of publicly available data, such as death certificates, to identify ALS cases and their locations, Satterwhite said. The identified cases are next broken down per 100,000 per population and mapped by zip code.
The research will also include a same day “rapid response” to gathering water samples from areas of potential bloom sightings and submitting the samples to her team to confirm the presence of toxins, according to Satterwhite. The team will also use predictive models and a drone to gather overhead data to search for signs of visible toxins within the blooms.
“We’re hoping there is some kind of physiological differences there that show up in the images,” she said.
Satterwhite reiterated Stoop’s concerns that climate is a contributing cause for so many algal blooms. She noted the rise in sea surface temperatures and level of rainfall from 2000 to the present.
These climate-related events “are inducive to blooms” that are occurring and “according to these graphs it’s just going to get worse,” she said.
Most Popular
Comments / 0