Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Multiple Myeloma case report

Motor neuron disease and paraproteinemia are seen together not infrequently and the literature re-garding pathogenesis has been increasing. Pa-raproteinemia, if detected, can be encountered in any type of the motor neuron disease (MND), either in focal or generalized types. The association of MND and lymphoma has been reported more frequently: yet. number of cases with MND associated with mul-tiple myeloma is very limited. We found paraproteinemia and multiple myeloma in the investigation of two MND cases, 66 year old woman and 49 years old man both of whom were di-agnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). There has been report in similar cases stating that neurological signs can precede the detection of ma-lignancy. but vice versa is also prevalent. For this re-ason. we st'ant to emphasize the importance of ma-lignancy, paraproteinemia, multiple myeloma investigations in the patients with ALS diagnosis. In-sisting on detailed neurological examination is also very important in patients with infraquently seen ma-lignancies such as multiple myeloma. Clinical fin-dings and pathophysiological mechanisms have been discussed in the light of the related literature.