Medication (placebo or deflazacort in a cross-over design) was only started in the second year of the study. All patients showed a decline in Androgen Receptor Antagonist concentration muscle strength
over one year, which was reflected in the tests performed. All studies agree that dysferlinopathy is a chronically progressive condition, sometimes with periods where there is a plateau of muscle function, reaching at variable age wheelchair dependency.
Why writing of glycogen storage diseases (GSD), which are “old hats” among the metabolic disorders affecting skeletal muscle? Why writing of GSD to honor Valerie Askanas and King Engel? Why writing with Ronen Spiegel? The answer to the first question is deeply personal: the very Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical first paper of the senior (chronologically, not Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical academically) author (SDM) described a little girl with Pompe disease (1) and
his first project as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Lewis P. (Bud) Rowland was to unravel why glycogen accumulation is not limitless in muscle (2). The answer to the second question is an exciting, if ancient, collaboration showing that both morphological and biochemical features of Pompe disease were reproduced in muscle culture (3). The Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical answer to the third question is a much more recent collaboration on a patient who had phosphoglycerate kinase (PGK) deficiency (GSD IX) and a pure myopathy, or so we thought initially (see below) (4). Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical The truth is that GSD are still very much an open chapter, where new entities are discovered (5, 6), apparently paradoxical myopathies due to lack, rather than excess, of glycogen (aglycogenosis or GSD 0) are being reported (7, 8), old disorders, such as Lafora disease, are now recognized as GSD (9), and therapy based on enzyme replacement is reasonably successful in GSD II (10, 11). This is not meant to be a comprehensive review of the muscle glycogenoses. Rather, we will consider puzzling aspects of some
GSD, following the Roman numerical order shown in Figure 1. Figure 1. Scheme of glycogen metabolism and glycolysis. Roman numerals denote muscle glycogenoses due to Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical defects in the following enzymes: II, acid α-glucosidase (AAG); III, debrancher; IV, brancher; V, myophosphorylase; VI, liver phosphorylase; VII, muscle … GSD II (acid maltase deficiency, Pompe disease) The first and oldest ADAMTS5 conundrum about this disorder was its clinical heterogeneity, with a severe generalized infantile form and a later-onset form largely confined to skeletal muscle and presenting in children (juvenile onset) or in adults (late-onset). As acid maltase (acid α-glucosidase, GAA) is a single ubiquitous protein, it is not surprising that initial findings of different residual GAA activities in muscle (12) have been confirmed and related to the severity of GAA mutations, with nonsense mutations prevailing in the infantile form and missense and splicing (i.e. “leaky”) mutations prevailing in later onset cases (13, 14).