Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0026850 (muscular dystrophy)
 5,870 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

We report the development of a rapid nonradioactive technique for the genetic prediction of human disease and its diagnostic application to hemophilia A. This method is based on enzymatic amplification of short segments of human genes associated with inherited disorders. A novel feature of the procedure is the use of a heat-stable DNA polymerase, which allows the repeated rounds of DNA synthesis to proceed at 63 degrees C. The high sequence specificity of the amplification reaction at this elevated temperature permits restriction-site polymorphisms, contained in the amplified samples, to be analyzed by visual inspection of their digestion products on polyacrylamide gels. By means of this method, we have performed carrier detection and prenatal diagnosis of hemophilia in two families with use of the factor VIII intragenic polymorphisms identified by the restriction enzymes BclI and XbaI. Predictions can be made directly from chorionic villi, without previous DNA extraction, and fetal sex can be determined by amplification of sequences specific for the Y chromosome. Specific amplification of genomic sequences with heat-stable DNA polymerase is applicable to the diagnosis of a wide variety of inherited disorders. These include diseases diagnosed by restriction-site variation, such as Duchenne's muscular dystrophy and sickle cell anemia, those due to a collection of known mutations, such as beta-thalassemia, and those due to gene deletion, such as alpha-thalassemia.
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PMID:An improved method for prenatal diagnosis of genetic diseases by analysis of amplified DNA sequences. Application to hemophilia A. 365 65

Myotonic dystrophy (DM) is an autosomal dominant neuromuscular disease with an estimated incidence of 1 in 8000 and is the most common form of muscular dystrophy affecting adults. An unstable, untranslated part of the myotonic dystrophy protein kinase gene on the long arm of chromosome 19, composed of CTG repeats, is a genetic marker for DM. We have developed a fast non-radioactive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) procedure to detect the (CTG)n repeat expansion in DM patients and their relatives. Genomic DNA extracted from peripheral blood lymphocytes was amplified by PCR using specific primers to flank the region containing the triplets. To improve the amplification of this CG-rich region, either 10% glycerol or rTth DNA polymerase XL (extra long) was added to the reaction mixture, allowing amplification of huge expansions otherwise not polymerized by PCR. The PCR products were Southern blotted and the expansion revealed using a fluorescein-labelled (CTG)10 probe. We compared our results with those obtained in 24 patients and relatives using genomic digestion followed by radioactive Southern blot; in all cases the results overlapped. The same technique was used for prenatal diagnosis in pregnant DM mothers. We conclude that this new method is reliable for the genetic testing of DM patients.
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PMID:A new non-radioactive method for the screening and prenatal diagnosis of myotonic dystrophy patients. 961 10