What are the symptoms of muscular dystrophy, what’s the life span of someone who suffers from it and how’s it treated?
The genetic condition sees muscles in the body weaken and eventually waste away
MUSCULAR dystrophy is the cruel muscle-wasting disease that has no cure and for many sufferers can be a death sentence.
It's a genetic condition that leaves people severely disabled and in most cases confined to a wheelchair. Here's what you need to know about it...
What is muscular dystrophy?
Muscular dystrophy is the generic term for a genetic condition that sees the muscles in the body weaken and eventually waste away.
It is caused by a mutation in genes that the sufferer inherits from their parents and often runs in families.
There are many types of the disease and some don't cause disability or affect life expectancy.
However, some variations including Duchenne and limb-girdle can be fatal.
What are the symptoms of muscular dystrophy?
As there are many different types of muscular dystrophy, the symptoms can vary depending on the variation.
However, one symptom all sufferers have is a muscle weakness, but again the severity of this is different from person to person.
For example, with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, it is usually diagnosed in children and symptoms include difficulty walking, running, or jumping, late speech development and learning difficulties.
Whereas oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy, which is more common in older people, has symptoms such as droopy eyelids, difficulty swallowing and limb weakness.
What is the lifespan of somebody suffering muscular dystrophy?
Not all types of muscular dystrophy are life limiting or cause severe disability.
Variants such as facioscapulohumeral MD and oculopharyngeal MD do not usually affect life expectancy.
Emery-Dreifuss MD, a type of muscular dystrophy that develops in childhood usually sees sufferers live until middle age.
But myotonic is seriously life-threating and Duchenne sufferers only live into their 20s or 30s.
How is muscular dystrophy treated?
At the moment, there is no cure for muscular dystrophy and treatment only consists of helping sufferers manage their physical disabilities.
This can be through exercise, physiotherapy, physical aids or surgery.
Medication is also available such as steroids to improve muscle strength and pills to treat heart problems stemming from the disease.
