Blog Archives

In this publication, the authors studied the natural history of dystrophinopathies and the genotype-phenotype correlations made possible by the development of the clinical part of the French DMD database. The collection of 70,000 clinical data for 600 patients with an average longitudinal follow-up of 12years enabled clarification of the natural history of Duchenne and Becker … [Read more]

Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a leading cause of chronic morbidity and mortality in muscular dystrophy (MD) patients. Current pharmacological treatments are not yet able to counteract chronic myocardial wastage, thus novel therapies are being intensely explored. MicroRNAs have been implicated as fine regulators of cardiomyopathic progression. Previously, miR-669a downregulation has been linked to the severe … [Read more]

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) typically occurs as a result of truncating mutations in the DMD gene that result in a lack of expression of the dystrophin protein in muscle fibres. Various therapies under development are directed toward restoring dystrophin expression at the subsarcolemmal membrane, including gene transfer. In a trial of intramuscular adeno-associated virus (AAV)-mediated … [Read more]

Merosin-deficient congenital muscular dystrophy type 1A is a severe and fatal muscle wasting disease with no cure. MDC1A patients and the dyW-/- mouse model exhibit severe muscle weakness, demyelinating neuropathy, failed muscle regeneration and premature death. The authors of the present study have recently shown that laminin-111, a form of laminin found in embryonic skeletal … [Read more]

Diagnosis of facioscapulohumeral dystrophy type 1 (FSHD1) is supported by a suggestive clinical presentation and associated with a heterozygous contraction of the D4Z4 repeat array on chromosome 4q35. The FSHD1 phenotype has a widely variable course with great inter- and intrafamilial heterogeneity. Three clinical forms can be distinguished: the classical phenotype associated with four to … [Read more]

Late-onset Pompe disease is a rare, but potentially treatable metabolic myopathy, and therefore should not be overlooked. However, it is not unusual that patients go undiagnosed for many years. The authors hypothesized that patients with late-onset Pompe disease may have been overlooked in a population of patients with unclassified neuromuscular disease. They used DBS (dried … [Read more]

GNE (Glucosamine [UDP-N-acetyl]-2-epimerase/N-acetylmannosamine kinase) myopathy, also known as distal myopathy with rimmed vacuoles (DMRV), hereditary inclusion body myopathy (hIBM), quadriceps-sparing myopathy or Nonaka myopathy, is a clinicopathologically distinct distal myopathy with autosomal-recessive mode of inheritance. Mutations in the GNE gene are known to cause this form of distal myopathy. Over the last 6 years, a … [Read more]

Autosomal recessive Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (AR-CMT) is often characterized by onset in early childhood and severe phenotype compared to the dominant forms. CMT disease associated with periaxin gene (PRX) is rare and characterized by demyelination limited to the major peripheral nerves. Following the discovery of a high frequency of a specific periaxin gene mutation (E1085fsX4 homozygote) … [Read more]

Charcot-Marie-Tooth 1A (CMT1A) is a demyelinating hereditary neuropathy whose pathogenetic mechanisms are still poorly defined and an etiologic treatment is not yet available. An abnormally high intracellular Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+ ]i ) occurs in Schwann cells from CMT1A rats (CMT1A SC) and is caused by overexpression of the purinoceptor P2 × 7. Normalization of the Ca2+ levels … [Read more]

An international Clinical Outcomes Group consisting of clinicians, scientists, patient advocacy groups, and industries identified a need for a scale to measure motor performance of the upper limb. This study reports the steps leading to the development of the Performance of the Upper Limb (PUL), a tool specifically designed for assessing upper limb function in … [Read more]