Talk:Alpers' disease

Rename as "Alpers Syndrome?"
It seems "Alpers' Syndrome" is used slightly more than "Alpers' Disease" in journal results from scholar.google.com, 312 to 270. The dates suggest that "syndrome" seems to be used more in recent times, and disease in older articles, though Disease is still used. As a non-expert, my guess is that it's now considered a syndrome, having multiple symptoms grouped under one name. Also, I'm not sure how to get a precise count from scholar.google.com, but a casual browsing suggests that with Syndrome, the apostrophe is used relatively rarely, whereas with disease, the apostrophe seemed more common. I did add redirects from Alpers syndrome and Alpers' syndrome to this article, and mention the syndrome and two other synonymous terms in the opening sentence. -Agyle 04:48, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Hello, my name is Louise Stelma. I have had two children diagnosed with Alpers Disease. Kenneth Girard Stelma was born in 1963 and Lorraine Marie Stelma was born in 1964. It was diagnosed as Alpers Disease at that time, and they were under the care of Metro General Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. Kenny and Lorrie lived at home until they were 4 and 5 years old. They moved to The Filling Memorial Home of Mercy in Toledo, Ohio. Kenny lived until he was 33 years old. Lorrie lived until she was 14 years old. There were many biopsy's and testing done with both children, by the Metro General Hospital on the West Side of Cleveland, and the Toledo Hospital. The Filling Memorial Home of Mercy did evaluations of the children and had nurses and doctors on call there all the time. This is the first time that I've talked publicly about this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.130.3.215 (talk) 08:37, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Non-copyrighted but plagiarism
Some (much?) text in this article seems copied from this ninds.nih.gov page. Being a US government website, it's in the public domain and can legally be copied, but Wikipedia's policy is to attribute such copying. (See Plagiarism.) I'm not sure how to attribute large tracts, other than putting them in quotes, but they've been slightly modified, so I'm just noting this and hoping someone else will address the issue. -Agyle 04:48, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Further info to add: prions
There's some recent research indicating subviral agents known as prions are a or the cause of the disease. Someone interested in this topic might want to find reliable sources and add information on it. -Agyle 04:48, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

In 2004 a gene was isolated linked to this disease. My only son died of this disease in 1999, and my husband tested positive for the gene in 2008. I am currently waiting for my test results. The testing is done at Baylor University only, and both parents will have the gene if a child is affected by the disease, confirming it is indeed an autosomal recessive syndrome. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alpersmom (talk • contribs) 17:07, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Naming of the Disease
I reworked this section as it referred to Alpers' original publication on the disease, not Blackwell's reference to Alpers' for the name of the disease. Riis303 (talk) 01:46, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Children/Infants
I will change this to "mostly" Children/Infants.

This because a friend of my died of Alpers disease/syndrome 2 months after the diagnose/4 months after the first symptoms, at the age of 20. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeroen84 (talk • contribs) 22:12, 22 July 2008 (UTC)