This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

II. Diseases Simulating Muscular Dystrophies

Tetsuo Furukawa, MD; James B. Peter, MD, PhD

JAMA. 1978;239(16):1654-1659.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

BETWEEN the middle and the end of the 19th century, muscular dystrophies were established as clinical and pathological entities distinct from neurogenic muscular atrophies.

However, keen eyes of excellent clinicians have never overlooked unusual signs occasionally observed in muscular dystrophy patients. Landouzy and Déjèrine¹ observed fasciculations in one of their patients with facioscapulohumeral (FSH) dystrophy and stated, "Fibrillary contractions of muscle favor myelopathy." Some cases of atypical muscular dystrophies with fasciculations have been described. As early as 1886 Penzoldt² recognized such a disease and considered it a transitional form between muscular dystrophy and spinal muscular atrophy. Erb³ in 1910 emphasized the difficulty in diagnosing muscular dystrophy because of the presence of such a transitional form. However, little attention was paid such atypical muscular dystrophies.

Recently, biochemical, electron microscopic, and electrophysiological studies have shown the presence of several new diseases, some of which are clinically difficult to differentiate . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Footnotes
This is part 2 of two parts. Part 1 appeared in the April 14, 1978 issue of The Journal, pages 1537 to 1542.

Parts 1 and 2 are available as a combined reprint. Address requests to Department of Medicine, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA 90024 (Dr Peter).

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?