Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

A. Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, or DMD, is a typical sex-linked disorder that only effects boys. Its very rare that you will find a girl that has this certain disease. A boy inherits DMD from an X chromosome form his mother. There are more then 20 different types of muscular dystrophy in the world and DMD is the most common of them all.

B. The history of this disease has been around since the 1800s. The disease was named after a French neurologist, Duchenne de Boulogne. He would follow every patient, hospital to hospital, that had the unknown disease so that he could learn more about it. Duchenne was also the first to biopsy on a living patient.

C. The symptoms of DMD are unusual ways of walking and running and the boy has a hard time of talking around the age of 3. The calves of the boy would be very large and firm for their age group. Some more symptoms are: gait problems, difficulty of standing, frequent falls, and wasted muscles.

D. What is the cause of DMD? The cause for DMD is the mutation of a gene that produces dystrophin, which is a protein found in the sarcolemma of normal muscles.

E. Doctors use 2 different tests to diagnosis a patient. These 2 tests, CPK and DNA, can tell how many carriers there are, if the patient has DMD or BMD, and if there is any muscular damage to the body.

F. So far, there are no cures for DMD but there are a couple of ways to slow down the progress of the muscular disorder such as physical therapy and taking steroids.

G. There are no known ways to prevent a boy from getting DMD.

H. There are 2 new researches that are going on. The first study are to examine young boys under the age of 3 and it is a 2 year study and the boys would be going through a 2 year study where doctors would see what the outcome of motor and mental development. The second study are to examine boys between the age of 7 and 22 who have DMD and are not walking any more.

The Jett Foundation
http://jettfoundation.org/events/text-dmd-to-90999-for-duchenne-research

Video
http://www.watchknow.org/Video.aspx?VideoID=27353

Work Cited Sources
http://www.ygyh.org/dmd/whatisit.htm
http://www.mdausa.org/disease/dmd.html
http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=11686
http://dictionary.webmd.com/terms/dystrophin
http://www.dircsa.org.au/tag/dmd/
http://quest.mda.org/news/dmd-progression-studied-very-young-and-nonwalkers

http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/d/duchennemd/symptoms.htm

Quiz:

1. What is the name of the French neurologist who studied DMD?

2. Name the 2 ways to slow down DMD?

3. How does a boy get DMD?

4. Can girls get this certain muscular disease?

5. There are 2 tests that a doctor goes through to find diagnose their patient. What do the 2 tests tell them?