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Query: UMLS:C0026850 (muscular dystrophy)
 5,870 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Mutations in the genes encoding the dystrophin-associated sarcoglycan proteins (alpha, beta, gamma, and delta) (primary sarcoglycanopathies) have recently been shown to cause some cases of the genetically heterogeneous autosomal recessive muscular dystrophies (limb-girdle muscular dystrophy (LGMD) types 2D, 2E, 2C and 2F, respectively). Patients with a primary sarcoglycanopathy are clinically indistinguishable from those with the primary dystrophinopathies. Consequently, a definitive diagnosis can only be achieved through biochemical and molecular analysis. Patient biopsies showing normal dystrophin immunostaining (and/or immunoblot) can be immunostained with antibodies directed against any component of the sarcoglycan complex, and biochemical deficiencies of the sarcoglycan complex can be detected. We have shown, however, that only some of the biochemically-deficient patients are affected with alpha-, beta-, gamma- and delta-sarcoglycan mutations. Many will show mutations of an, as yet, unidentified protein. The primary sarcoglycanopathies have been estimated to account for about 5 per cent of muscular dystrophy in patients with normal dystrophin findings.
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PMID:Autosomal recessive muscular dystrophy and mutations of the sarcoglycan complex. 902 58

Consumer and rehabilitation provider factors that might limit employment opportunities for 154 individuals with six slowly progressive neuromuscular diseases (NMD) were investigated. The NMDs were spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), hereditary motor sensory neuropathy (HMSN), Becker's muscular dystrophy (BMD), facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD), myotonic muscular dystrophy (MMD), and limb-girdle syndrome (LGS). Forty percent were employed in the competitive labor market at the time of the study, 50% had been employed in the past, and 10% had never been employed. The major consumer barrier to employment was education. Other important factors were type of occupation, intellectual capacity, psychosocial adjustment, and the belief by most individuals that their physical disability was the only or major barrier to obtaining a job. Psychological characteristics were associated with level of unemployment. However, physical impairment and disability were not associated with level of unemployment. There also were differences among the types of NMDs. Compared with the SMA, HMSN, BMD, and FSHD groups, the MMD and LGS groups had significantly higher levels of unemployment, lower educational levels, and fewer employed professional, management, and technical workers. Nonphysical impairment factors such as a low percentage of college graduates, impaired intellectual function in some individuals, and poor psychological adjustment were correlated with higher unemployment levels in the MMD group. Unemployment in the LGS group was correlated with a failure to complete high school. Major provider barriers to employment were the low level of referrals to Department of Rehabilitation by physicians and the low percentage of acceptance into the State Department of Rehabilitation. The low rate of acceptance was primarily attributable to the low number of referrals compounded by a lack of counselor experience with individuals with NMD. Both consumer and provider barriers may contribute to the lack of interest in obtaining a job.
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PMID:Employment profiles in neuromuscular diseases. 903 8

Malignant limb-girdle muscular dystrophy (MLGMD) was proposed by Miyoshi et al. in 1966 as a clinical and genetic entity of muscular dystrophy, with clinical features similar to Duchenne muscular dystrophy but showing autosomal recessive inheritance. Recently, deficiency of alpha-sarcoglycan (adhalin), which is one of the components of dystrophin-glycoprotein complex, in the skeletal muscle has been found in several patients with MLGMD or severe childhood autosomal recessive muscular dystrophy. To investigate alpha-sarcoglycan gene mutations in patients with MLGMD, we analyzed cDNA prepared from skeletal muscle by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), or genomic DNA prepared from peripheral blood leukocytes by PCR, using single-strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP). When products amplified by RT-PCR or PCR showed aberrant conformers on SSCP analysis, these products were sequenced by the fluorescence-based dideoxy termination method. We found missense mutations, insertions or deletions in the alpha-sarcoglycan gene in 6 families with MLGMD. In the literature, alpha-sarcoglycan gene mutations have been identified in 21 families with MLGMD/SCARMD including our 6 families. Half of the families have the cytosine to thymidine substitution at nt.229, resulting in the replacement of Arg by Cys at codon 77, and most of the mutations have been found in the region coding extracellular domain of alpha-sarcoglycan. Analysis of the alpha-sarcoglycan gene is indispensable for diagnosis, assessment of prognosis, genetic counseling, and future gene therapy in patients with autosomal recessive childhood-onset muscular dystrophy.
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PMID:[Gene analysis in patients with muscular dystrophy: alpha-sarcoglycan (adhalin) gene mutations in patients with malignant limb-girdle muscular dystrophy]. 912 Sep 97

Merosin-deficient congenital muscular dystrophy (CMD) is an autosomal recessive condition usually with onset at birth or within the first months of life. Affected children are severely disabled and usually do not achieve the ability to walk without support. They invariably have white matter abnormalities on brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We report a 29-year-old man with a late childhood onset limb-girdle type muscular dystrophy and cerebral white matter changes on MRI. Immunocyto-chemical studies of the patient's muscle biopsy showed a reduction in expression of the laminin alpha 2 chain of merosin. The patient had three affected siblings, and microsatellite genotyping confirmed linkage to the laminin alpha 2 locus (LAMA2) on chromosome 6q2 in this family. This case probably represents a milder allelic variant of classical merosin-deficient CMD. Merosin status should be assessed in patients with late-onset limb girdle muscular dystrophy.
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PMID:Late onset muscular dystrophy with cerebral white matter changes due to partial merosin deficiency. 913 48

We studied dystrophin with both immunohistochemistry and immunoblotting in 201 muscle biopsies stored in liquid nitrogen during the period 1985-92. The systematic use of dystrophin testing combined with DNA analysis and with 3-10 years follow-up of the patients yielded a significant modification of the diagnoses made previously and identified dystrophinopathies with unusual expression and course. Seventeen out of 152 (11.18%) diagnoses in males and 8 out of 49 (16.32%) in females were modified by dystrophin testing. Most diagnostic errors (9 out of 27 diagnoses) were in the group Becker muscular dystrophy-limb girdle muscular dystrophy, confirming the clinical overlap of the two diseases. Unusual expressions of dystrophinopathy included muscular dystrophy with early elbow contractures (two patients), recurrent myoglobinuria (one patient), dilating cardiomyopathy (two patients), myoglobinuria and associated dilating cardiomyopathy (one patient), very late-onset benign myopathy (two patients and one manifesting carrier) and congenital myopathy (one manifesting carrier). In the group 'idiopathic hyper-CKaemia', we did not find any dystrophinopathy in 34 males, whereas five out of nine females were found to be carriers. Immunohistochemical analysis of dystrophin using the monoclonal antibody against the C-terminus detected 99% of protein defects and was found to be the most cost-effective way of revealing dystrophinopathies. The combined use of immunohistochemical analysis with the antibody against the C-terminus and immunoblotting with the antibody against the core of the protein appears to be a highly reliable diagnostic approach (100% detection rate).
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PMID:Systematic use of dystrophin testing in muscle biopsies: results in 201 cases. 913 86

Efforts to understand the function of dystrophin, the protein product for the Duchenne muscular dystrophy gene, resulted in the purification of the dystrophin-glycoprotein complex. Over the past year several novel components of this complex have been identified. Recent studies have extended the number of muscular dystrophies associated with the oligomeric complex to six genetically distinct diseases, including three new forms of limb-girdle muscular dystrophy and one form of congenital muscular dystrophy.
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PMID:Muscular dystrophies and the dystrophin-glycoprotein complex. 914 99

Clinically manifest muscular dystrophy is often accompanied by functional and anatomic derangements in the myocardium which often have prognostic significance. We describe two young patients who had unrecognized limb-girdle muscular dystrophy who presented with cardiac arrhythmia. One developed dilated cardiomyopathy complicated by ventricular tachyarrhythmia. The other patient had atrial paralysis requiring permanent pacing. It is important to consider the possibility of underlying muscular dystrophy in patients who present with cardiac arrhythmia without an obvious cause.
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PMID:Cardiac arrhythmias as presenting symptoms in patients with limb-girdle muscular dystrophy. 915 68

Autosomal recessive progressive muscular dystrophies may be clinically subclassified into limb-girdle muscular dystrophy (LGMD) and distal myopathy (DM), each clinical form being genetically heterogeneous. Genes for LGMD type 2B and Miyoshi myopathy (a form of DM) have been mapped to essentially the same region on chromosome 2p. We described recently a large inbred family with autosomal recessive muscular dystrophy in which the LGMD and the DM phenotypes were manifested in separate affected members, and we assigned the gene for this condition to the same locus as in LGMD2B and Miyoshi myopathy. Here we report extended haplotypes in this family generated from 15 markers located at the region of interest on chromosome 2p13. Key recombinants allowed us to reduce further the candidate region for this polymorphic condition and defined the loci D2S327 and D2S2111 as the most likely boundaries of the mutant gene.
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PMID:Refined genetic location of the chromosome 2p-linked progressive muscular dystrophy gene. 919 58

Recent advances in molecular genetics research have revolutionised our understanding of the childhood muscular dystrophies. The first breakthrough came in 1987 with the identification of the gene for dystrophin, the protein that is abnormal in X-linked Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Dystrophin is bound to a complex of proteins in the muscle membrane, and primary abnormalities of these proteins have now been identified as the cause of some autosomally inherited forms of muscular dystrophy. A group of transmembrane proteins known as alpha- (adhalin) beta-, gamma- and delta-sarcoglycan are deficient in autosomal recessive limb-girdle muscular dystrophy, and the extracellular matrix protein merosin (alpha2-laminin), is deficient in a subset of patients with congenital muscular dystrophy. Identification of primary deficiencies in these 'dystrophin associated proteins' will result in improved diagnostic accuracy, more accurate genetic counselling and, in some cases, the availability of prenatal diagnosis.
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PMID:Recent advances in diagnosis of the childhood muscular dystrophies. 925 92

Inherited cardiomyopathies may arise from mutations in genes that are normally expressed in both heart and skeletal muscle and therefore may be accompanied by skeletal muscle weakness. Phenotypically, patients with familial dilated cardiomyopathy (FDC) show enlargement of all four chambers of the heart and develop symptoms of congestive heart failure. Inherited cardiomyopathies may also be accompanied by cardiac conduction-system defects that affect the atrioventricular node, resulting in bradycardia. Several different chromosomal regions have been linked with the development of autosomal dominant FDC, but the gene defects in these disorders remain unknown. We now characterize an autosomal dominant disorder involving dilated cardiomyopathy, cardiac conduction-system disease, and adult-onset limb-girdle muscular dystrophy (FDC, conduction disease, and myopathy [FDC-CDM]). Genetic linkage was used to exclude regions of the genome known to be linked to dilated cardiomyopathy and muscular dystrophy phenotypes and to confirm genetic heterogeneity of these disorders. A genomewide scan identified a region on the long arm of chromosome 6 that is significantly associated with the presence of myopathy (D6S262; maximum LOD score [Z(max)] 4.99 at maximum recombination fraction [theta(max)] .00), identifying FDC-CDM as a genetically distinct disease. Haplotype analysis refined the interval containing the genetic defect, to a 3-cM interval between D6S1705 and D6S1656. This haplotype analysis excludes a number of striated muscle-expressed genes present in this region, including laminin alpha2, laminin alpha4, triadin, and phospholamban.
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PMID:Linkage of familial dilated cardiomyopathy with conduction defect and muscular dystrophy to chromosome 6q23. 938 2


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