Muscular Dystrophy

Most recent answer: 10/22/2007

Q:
What can you tell me about muscular dystrophy?
- Anonymous
A:

Muscular dystrophy is not just one disease - it’s actually a whole group of about 10 related diseases, such as Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and Steinert’s Disease. All of these diseases are genetically inheritable, although they are each inherited in different ways. The exact symptoms vary from one disease to another, but they all involve the wasting away of muscles. One of the biggest risks with most of the muscular dystrophies is that the muscles in the heart can stop working.

I’m not going to go into details about any of these diseases here, since there’s so many other descriptions already available on the web. Probably the best resource available when it comes to muscular dystrophies is the Mayo Clinic's website. In addition to their main site, you can check out this , where they have information about each of the specific muscular dystrophy diseases as well as some other neuromuscular diseases.

-Tamara


(published on 10/22/2007)