Muscular dystrophy is a group of hereditary chronic ailments that affect a person's muscles. These diseases are characterized by increasing muscle weakness, as well as degeneration of muscles. They lose the ability to contract, replace with a connective and fatty tissue and even undergo disintegration.
Symptoms of muscular dystrophy
At the first stages, muscular dystrophy is manifested by a decrease in muscle tone. Because of this, gait can be broken, and with time, other muscle skills are lost. Especially rapidly this disease progresses in children. In just a few months they can stop walking, sitting or holding a head.
Also the symptoms of muscular dystrophy are:
- atrophy of skeletal muscles;
- constant fatigue;
- frequent falls;
- an increase in the size of the muscles due to proliferation of connective tissue (especially the gastrocnemius);
- absence of muscle pain.
Forms of muscular dystrophy
Several forms of this disease are known today. Let us consider them in more detail.
Duchenne muscular dystrophy
This form is also called pseudohypertrophic muscular dystrophy, and it is most often manifested in childhood. The first signs of an illness appear at the age of 2-5 years. Most often, the patients feel muscle weakness in the muscle groups of the pelvic girdle and lower limbs. Then they are affected by the muscles of the upper half of the body, and only then the rest of the muscle groups.
Muscular dystrophy of this form can lead to the fact that by the age of 12 the child will completely lose the ability to move. Up to 20 years, most patients do not survive.
Progressive muscular dystrophy of Erba-Rota
Another kind of this ailment. The first symptoms of the disease are mainly manifested in 14-16 years, in rare cases - at 5-10 years of age. The most obvious initial signs are pathological muscle fatigue and a sharp change in the gait to the "duck".
Muscular dystrophy of Erba-Rota
This disease is first localized in the muscle groups of the lower extremities, but sometimes it affects both the shoulder and pelvic muscles simultaneously. The disease progresses rapidly and causes disability.
Becker muscular dystrophy
Similar to the symptoms with the previous form of the disease, but this form progresses slowly. The patient can remain operational for decades.
Emery-Dreyfus muscular dystrophy
Another type of the disease under consideration. This form is manifested between 5 and 15 years of life. The early typical symptoms of such muscular dystrophy are:
- disturbance of elbow joint function;
- atrophy of biceps arm muscles, and later of deltoid muscles;
- walking on the outer edges of the feet.
Patients may also have cardiac conduction and cardiomyopathy .
Treatment of muscular dystrophy
To diagnose muscular dystrophy, an examination with a therapist and an orthopedist is performed, and electromyography is also done. You can conduct a molecular biological study that will help determine the probability of the disease in children.
Treatment of muscular dystrophy is an action aimed at slowing and stopping the pathological process, since it is impossible to completely cure this ailment. To prevent the development of dystrophic processes in the muscles, the patient is given injections:
- vitamin B1;
- adenosine triphosphate;
- corticosteroids .
The patient should regularly do a therapeutic massage.
Also, everyone who suffers from muscular dystrophy, you need to do respiratory gymnastics. Without it, the patients will develop such diseases of the respiratory system as pneumonia and respiratory failure, and then there may be other complications:
- disorders of cardiac activity;
- changing memory functions and learning ability.