Muscle Atrophy: A Case Study

1. The meaning of Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a severe form of muscular dystrophy caused by a genetic defect that can be characterized by a disturbed growth of cardiac and skeletal muscles. It usually affects boys. In 1861, a French neurologist, Guillaume B. Duchenne, was the first person to give a detailed description of this syndrome.

Muscle atrophy is the loss of skeletal muscle mass and function that occurs when there is a long period of inactivity of the muscles or defects in motor neuron's (Reilly, Beau 2015). Defects in the motor neurons that stimulate the muscle cause the muscle mass to decrease as proteins that initiate contractions of muscle dissipate. Stimulus is not transferred to the weakened muscle fibers effectively, reducing the contractile force possible for generation from the stimulus. Muscle mass increases upon recovery, as restimulation of the muscle enlarges fiber size, thus a greater contractile force can be generated from the stimulus.

Spinal Muscular Atrophy is classify as an interneuron abnormality and loss of the anterior horn cells in the spinal column. SMA is categorized into three subtypes with the classification embedded on the motor milestone achieved. Spinal type I (Werdnig-Hoffman disease) child is to weak that they never learn to sit, type II child learn to sit but never learn to walk without assistive device, and type III (Kugelberg-Welander disease) child can walk independently (Tecklin, 2015).

I know that the more times I skip, lactic acid will build up in my legs, from my own experience this makes you fell horrible. As our bodies perform strenuous exercise, we begin to breathe faster as we attempt to move more oxygen to our working muscles. The body prefers to generate most of its energy using aerobic methods, meaning with oxygen. The cells follow the aerobic process when the blood supplies enough oxygen to the cells, which is:- Glucose+ oxygen—>Carbon Dioxide+ water+ Energy. But when the blood cannot get the needed oxygen to the cells, it has to get the energy from the glucose in another way. The cells use the anaerobic pathway; It does this then by breaking glucose down into lactic acid, Glucose—>Lactic Acid+ Energy. Lactic acid is released into the muscles when they have used up glucose stores but still have intense energy needs. Small amounts of lactic acid operate as a temporary energy source, which helps you avoid fatigue during a workout. However, a build-up of lactic acid during a workout can create burning sensations in the muscles that can slow down or halt your activity. This is not an effective energy source for long periods of exercise, so the blood takes lactic acid to the liver which coverts it back into glucose to be used in the normal aerobic process. Scientist are always looking into ways to decrease lactic acid build up in elite athletes so they can perform faster

Spinal muscle atrophy, also known as SMA, is a genetic disease that takes the physical strength of people. It affects the motor nerve cells in the spinal cord, leaving the people who are affected unable to walk, eat, and sometimes even breath on their own (Izenberg, 2016). Most of the nerve cells that control muscles are located in the spinal cord, this is why it is spinal. It is muscular because it affects the muscles. Atrophy is the medical term for getting smaller and that is what happens when they are not used (The Muscular Dystrophy Association, 2016). When an individual has SMA they are not using their muscles as much or at all. That is how Spinal Muscle Atrophy got its name.

The recovery from illness or injury often requires otherwise healthy humans to undergo a period of muscle disuse (e.g. bed rest or limb immobilization). A major consequence of disuse is skeletal muscle atrophy. The ensuing impairments in muscle function, metabolic rate and insulin sensitivity, and accrual of body fat mass following two or more weeks of muscle disuse have been well documented. Studies investigating muscle disuse atrophy generally employ relatively long experimental periods, ranging from two to as long as 17 weeks of bed rest or limb immobilization. However, over the last decade, efforts have been made within healthcare systems to reduce the duration of bed rest/immobilization that patients endure due to illness or injury. At

As we learned, inside our muscles we have both thin and thick filaments, in which the thick are made of myosin, and the thin are composed of actin. When these proteins pull together, they cause muscle contraction. They remain this way, until ATP attaches to the myosin and forces it to let go of the actin (howstuffworks.com). Basically, muscles need ATP in order to release from a contracted state, because it is used to pump the calcium out of the cells, allowing the fibers to unattached. When a person is alive, their muscle cells utilize energy to transport calcium ions to the outside of the cells, which is when the muscles are released from the contracted state. When a person dies, the membranes of the muscle cells become more absorbent to calcium ions, therefore they are unable to contract and the actin and myosin will remain latched until decomposition begins taking place

Heavy weight on body parts may partially or completely cut off blood flow. Decrease in oxygen supply leads to anaerobic metabolism, skeletal muscle tissue begins to break down. As muscle cells die, they absorb sodium, water and calcium; releases potassium, myoglobin,

According to Medical News Today, muscular dystrophy is a disorder that is characterized by the progressive loss of muscle mass and consequent loss of strength(Newman). There are specific causes that effect the body, and thus creates certain symptoms that are noticeable initially, and symptoms that occur later on in the process. I will be discussing the causes, symptoms-both initial and later, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis. In order for one to be classified as having muscular dystrophy, there are certain causes that are very unique to this disorder. First off, though let me say that there are different types of muscular dystrophy, which are: Myotonic, Duchenne, Becker, Limb-girdle, Facioscapulohumeral, Congenital, Oculopharyngeal, Distal,

Muscular dystrophy is a group of diseases that cause an abnormal progressive deteriorating of the muscles, leading to muscle weakness. Many different types of dystrophy are known, characterized by the muscle groups affected. The disease is caused from a genetic mutation that prevents a protein essential for normal muscle activity from being made, or being produced correctly. In each type of muscular dystrophy, a different protein is irregular (Emery, 2008). Furthermore, because this disease is due to a genetic mutation, there is no cure to fix the mutation. Therefore treatment is used to attend to the problems caused by the dystrophy and treatment strives to create a pleasant life for the patient. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, treatment methods include multiple types of therapy, including respiratory, physical, speech, drug, and occupational, as well as surgery (NINDS, 2011). Hydrotherapy, a type of physical therapy in water and its effects on muscular dystrophy patients will be focused on in the succeeding study.

Rhabdomyolysis is the breakdown of muscle fibers due to injury. The injury may come from physical damage to the muscle like an injury but other causes are:

The disease I have chosen to look into is Rippling Muscle Disease. Having the disease is sort of like having muscles that are always cramping and tensing in some way. It can cause muscle irritability, mounding, and as the name suggest, rippling. The condition is rare and symptoms don’t usually appear until adolescence. There have been a small number of Rippling Muscle Disease cases that fall under the autoimmune disease category. If they are not autoimmune they are more likely to be caused by mutations in the CAV3 gene. This makes it genetic.

If the dome of the diaphragm becomes more flattened (smaller ZOA), the fibers no longer pull the ribs up and out. The fibers begin to pull the ribs more horizontally. This decreases the expansion of the ribcage so there is a less than ideal drop in air pressure to allow for inspiration.hruska1 The ZOA is influenced by the abdominal muscles which also effects diaphragmatic tension. If the ZOA is less than ideal, we know that:

Insufficient Calories Consumed The human body requires a MINIMUM of 1200 calories per day to function. If you consume less than that (on a crash diet for example), your body will interpret that as being in a famine and will reduce your metabolism (the bodies ability to burn calories) in order to protect itself and be able to survive for longer. This will stop it from burning fat stores. Solution: Maintain a reasonable calorie consumption. Use a BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) calculator to determine how many calories your body requires per day to maintain itself. Once you have determined approximately how many calories your body requires to operate, reduce you calorie consumption to 500-700 calories less than that without going under 1200 calories.

It’s 2025, and a young couple sits anxiously in the waiting room of the geneticist’s office to learn the results of genomic tests on their growing embryos in petri dishes. They’ve been married for about five years, and, to their mothers’ reliefs, they’ve finally decided to have children. However, muscular dystrophy has been observed in Genevieve’s family and Alzheimer’s disease and Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in Tom’s. The doctor tested the embryos for the presence of genetic predispositions to these illnesses. He also tested for their genders, height, intelligence, and muscle tone. The couple will be able to select which embryos to keep for gestation and which to discard. This scenario inspires and invigorates some while mortifying others. Many see