Could You Be Suffering From Muscular Dystrophy?
Muscular dystrophy disorder is a genetic disease that weakens the musculoskeletal system, hampering movement while at it. The disorder is characterized by gradual skeletal muscle weakness, death of muscle tissues and defects in muscle protein. While crucial advances have been made in the medical field, there is no working cure for muscular dystrophy.
Is this disorder transferable from one person to another?
According to specialists in muscular dystrophy therapy in Toronto, patients with this disorder do not have the correct information in their genes. As a result, the body is prevented from making the correct proteins that are needed for healthy functioning muscles. Since muscular dystrophy is a genetic disorder, patients have the issue at birth. Simply put, one cannot catch this disease from another person but is born with it.
The main issue with this disorder is that with time, patient’s muscles get completely weakened. As a result, they progressively lose the ability to perform most of the things that people take granted such as sitting up, standing, walking around, and many more. This issue can affect a kid when very young or the symptoms might begin later in life. This being the case, it is not uncommon for seemingly healthy adults to develop the disease.
How is this disorder diagnosed?
Muscular dystrophy is an inheritable or genetic disease. However, it is not well known why two genetically same people get muscular dystrophy of differing severities. As such, the disorder’s diagnosis is based on a mixture of medical presentations, muscle biopsy results and blood tests. A medical history and physical examination is critical to the correct diagnosis of this muscle wasting disorder. While examining a patient, the physician asks all kinds of questions about the symptoms that he or she might have, his or her family’s health history, his or her past healthy history, any known allergies he or she might have, any medications that he or she might be taking, and much more.
Since there are no specific treatments to halt or cure this disorder, the physician normally recommends different kinds of light exercises and physical therapy. It is also important to utilize orthopedic appliances such as braces, wheelchairs, crutches and the likes in muscular dystrophy therapy. The physician might also propose a corrective orthopedic surgical operation to help preserve muscle functions. This kind of a surgery is helpful in that is prevents stiffening of the muscles, in particular near the joints in order to improve the patient’s quality of life. In most cases, steroids are utilized to slow the disease down. However, it should be noted that high doses of steroids or their long-term usage is known to cause serious health issues.
Testing the effectiveness of your Muscular Dystrophy drugs
There are two main options that can be opted for when it comes to testing the effectiveness of muscular dystrophy drugs you might be using. These include:
Ultrasound
According to the experts, healthy muscles contain millions of neatly structured cells. However, with muscular dystrophy, the same muscles become fibrous and filled up with fat infiltrated tissues. Since sick and healthy muscles look different in ultrasound images, medical experts have been exploring different ways of using ultrasound to monitor progression of muscular dystrophy, and muscle’s response to drugs such as steroids.
Smartphone-linked devices
With the help of specialized Smartphone-linked devices, researchers have been able to get accurate information about the progression of disorders such as muscular dystrophy in the body. These hand-held instruments offer convenient and fast medical information. This way, the specialists are able to bring the right kind of healthcare to the patient. These instruments are small, use minimal power and are comparatively inexpensive, making them ideal for use by muscular dystrophy therapists.