Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and PsychiatryNov 9, 2026, 16:29 GMT

More activity linked to lower amyotrophic lateral sclerosis risk

High self-reported activity was linked to 23% lower relative risk than low activity in a UK cohort followed for a median 14 years.

Paper by Jiali Gao, Christos V. Chalitsios, Derrick A Bennett, +2Alexander G. Thompson · University of Oxford

Our read

Populations

Studied:: Cohort study of 384,836 UK Biobank participants with valid activity questionnaires, median 14.0 years (Dose-response)
What changed:: ALS risk was 23% lower among participants reporting high physical activity than among those reporting low activity
The catch:: Early ALS symptoms could lower activity before diagnosis, reversing the apparent link
In the record:: The 3,085th paper on physical activity with results in people; 7,029 on record in all.

Editor of record: Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News

Paper

UK Biobank participants with valid activity questionnaires—384,836 adults aged 40–69 at recruitment—were included in an observational cohort analysis. Their median age was 57, and 52.1% were female. Over a median 14 years, 541 received a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease that damages nerves controlling voluntary movement.

Higher self-reported activity was associated with lower risk, but the lowest risk occurred in the middle activity range. Among 96,570 participants who wore wrist activity monitors for seven days, 98 developed the disease. Device measurements showed a different pattern: risk declined steadily as overall activity increased. The researchers adjusted their analyses for factors including sex, smoking, alcohol consumption and body mass index, a measure of weight relative to height.

Why it matters

The debated role of physical activity in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis bears on how lifestyle relates to neurological health as people age.

Caveats

Underlying health differences could have influenced both activity and later diagnosis, despite adjustments and analyses excluding early diagnoses. Participants entered the cohort at ages 40–69, limiting how well the findings apply to people outside that recruitment age range.

From the paper

Result

Using complete-case data, individuals in the middle IPAQ category had 26% lower risk of ALS compared with those in the low category (HR=0.74, 95% CI 0.59 to 0.94) and those in the high IPAQ category had a 23% lower risk (HR=0.77, 95% CI 0.61 to 0.96; ptrend=0.062; A).

Results, Self-reported physical activity was associated with lower ALS risk

Quoted word for word from the full text on PubMed Central.