Article (Transfusion -- March 8, 2012): The United States Trypanosoma cruzi Infection Study: Evidence for Vector-borne Transmission of the Parasite That Causes Chagas Disease Among United States Blood Donors.
The ALS Association says the average lifespan of someone diagnosed with the condition is between two and five years. More than 50 percent make it past year three. Twenty percent make it past year five. From there, the number plummets. Less than 5 percent make it past two decades.
1 ALS affects 350,000 people worldwide and as many as 30,000 people in the U.S. ( CNN) -- Besides charting the nature of space and time and penning the bestseller A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking has another distinction: He beat the life-expectancy odds for people with ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.