Muscular Dystrophy

A detailed Summary of Muscular Dystrophy

Scientists have been struggling with the cause, treatment of, and cure for Muscular dystrophy since its discovery in 1886, by Dr. Guillaume Duchenne. Muscular dystrophy is a hereditary disease, affecting thousands of people every year, two-thirds being children between the age of birth through adolescents. However, Muscular dystrophy can occur with no family history of the disease.

Muscular dystrophy is a degenerating disease, in which the skeletal muscles degenerate, lose their strength, and cause increasing disability and deformity. Muscles attached to the bones through tendons are responsible for movement in the human body, however, in muscular dystrophy the muscles become progressively weak. As the muscle fibers become extremely weak they start to die and are replaced by connective tissue. The connective tissue is fibrous and fatty rather than muscular. These replacement fibers are normally found in skin and scar tissue and are not capable of movement, which cause the muscl

The final link to inheritance of Muscular Dystrophy is known as Autosomal Dominant Inheritance. With each pregnancy, this couple has a 50% chance of producing an affected child, whatever the child's sex. Based on this percentage, both parents should consider genetic counseling prior to bearing children.

Autosomal recessive inheritance is the third type known to cause muscular dystrophy, whereas both parents are carriers of the defective gene. For this reason the offspring have a 25% chance of being affected with both malformed genes, resulting in them being affected. The chance increases with cousin marriages.

The mother, who is a carrier, inherits an X-Linked or sex-linked faulty gene. The result is producing an affected son and or a daughter being a carrier. The second way is an affected male producing children, particularly daughters. All daughters born to fathers with x-linked muscular dystrophy will be carriers; on the contrary their sons will be unaffected. Scientists link this to a genet

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Approximate Word count = 677
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Science

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Muscular Dystrophy

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