Table 3.

Clinical summery of 11 ALS patients with respiratory dysfunction

ALS subjects	El Escorial criteria	ALSFRS-R	Impairment	Disease duration at sample collection (mo)‡
Patient 1	Definite	27	Moderate	12
Patient 2	Definite	23	Severe	12
Patient 3	Definite	18	Severe	24
Patient 4	Definite	16	Severe	18
Patient 5	Definite	29	Moderate	12
Patient 6	Definite	29	Moderate	04
Patient 7	Definite	29	Moderate	09
Patient 8	Definite	31	Moderate	08
Patient 9	Definite	35	Moderate	24
Patient 10	Probable	34	Moderate	12
Patient 11	Probable	35	Moderate	30

ALSFRS-R: ALS functional rating score-revised; Impairment was measured with ALSFRS-R. ‡ Duration of disease is the interval between appearance of first symptom of ALS and collection of sample. Median disease duration in patients with respiratory dysfunction is 12(4-30) months whereas median duration of disease was 17(3-72) months in patients without respiratory dysfunction, although the observed difference was not significant upon Mann-Whitney U analysis (p > 0.05).