Subject demographics and clinical characterization.

aFisher’s exact test refers to comparison between all ALS patients and healthy controlsbFisher’s exact test refers to comparison between all groups (ALS patients with spinal and bulbar onset and healthy controls)cMann-Whitney-U-test refers to comparison between all ALS patients and healthy controls or between ALS patients with spinal and bulbar onset.dKruskal-Wallis analysis of variances on ranks between healthy controls, ALS patients with bulbar and spinal onset.†Post-hoc comparison for pU-test: peALSFRS-R, revised ALS Functional Rating Scale (maximum score 48, falling with increasing physical impairment) [9]fECAS, Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioural Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Screen (maximum score 136, falling with cognitive decline) [10]NA, not applicable.Data are shown as median (interquartile range), min-max.