Muscular Dystrophy Essay

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Martha Burton Mr. Sanchez Essay CS 102 Muscular Dystrophy Muscular Dystrophy. The name itself implies its meaning. Dystrophy is a term meaning “to deteriorate”. Muscular is a word in reference to “muscle”. When put together in laymen’s terms, Muscular Dystrophy is deteriorating muscle. Hence all the types of MD, Myotonic Muscular Dystrophy, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, Becker Muscular Dystrophy, Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy, Facioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy, Congenital Muscular Dystrophy, Oculopharyngeal Muscular Dystrophy, Distal Muscular Dystrophy and Emery-Dreifuss, are different types of named medical conditions in which you will find muscle tissue deteriorating due to one cause or another. I will attempt to explain the different types and causes in the following paragraphs. Duchenne MD or DMD was named after French neurologist Dr. Guillaume Benjamin Amand Duchenne in the 1860s and Becker MD or BMD was named after German doctor Peter Emil Becker, who first described this variance of DMD in the 1950s. With Duchenne MD boys will start to show signs as early as the age of three. The disease weakens the skeletal, or voluntary, muscles, in the arms, legs and trunk. This will happen by the early teens or in some cases even earlier, the boy’s heart and the boys respiratory muscles also may be affected by this. Becker MD is a much milder version of Duchenne MD. Becker MD usually will not affect boys till they are in their adolescent years or till they are in their early adulthood. It is a much slower processes and greatly less predictable then Duchenne MD. In both Duchenne MD and Becker MD it is very rare that a female will be affected by either of these diseases. Duchenne MD and Becker MD are caused when an X chromosome fails to make the protein dystrophin. People with Becker MD have some dystrophin but not enough or it’s

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