Newborn screening for 5qSMA offers the potential for early, ideally pre-symptomatic, therapeutic intervention. However, limited data exist on the outcomes of individuals with 4 copies of SMN2, and there is no consensus within the SMA treatment community regarding early treatment initiation in this subgroup. To provide evidence-based insights into disease progression, we performed a retrospective analysis of 268 patients with 4 copies of SMN2 from the SMArtCARE registry in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Alterations in the MYH7 gene can cause cardiac and skeletal myopathies. MYH7-related skeletal myopathies are extremely rare, and the vast majority of causal variants in the MYH7 gene are predicted to alter the rod domain of the of ß-cardiac myosin molecule, resulting in distal muscle weakness as the predominant manifestation. Here we describe two unrelated patients harboring an in-frame deletion in the MYH7 gene that is predicted to result in deletion of a single amino acid (p.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRegenerative processes that counteract perifascicular muscle atrophy and capillary loss in juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM) are not well characterized. We aimed to analyze the pattern of myo-regeneration in relation to vascular damage and repair in muscle specimens from JDM patients. Myogenic regulatory factors that are sequentially expressed during myogenesis were studied by immunohistochemistry.
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