Imagine growing up with a muscular dystrophy. You have never been able to walk, run, hop, skip or jump correctly. When you were 5 years old, your physician told your parents that you had Pseudohypertrophic Muscular Dystrophy. In school your teacher has realized that you are having trouble learning. Your calf muscles become enlarged and you fall frequently. By the age of 10 you are required to wear braces to help you walk and by the age of 12 you become totally wheelchair confined. Your physician has put you on a low-calorie diet, high in fluids and fiber, because obesity would put more stress on your already weakened muscles. After the age of 18, you develop cardiomyopathy. This causes you to have high blood pressure and chest pain along with other symptoms ("Cardiomyopathy"� 1). After years of struggling and waiting, your doctor tells you that there is no cure for your disorder and that you will not live far into your twenties.
English: Fire fighters raising money for the Muscu...
Ian Field, 7, stands with his squad during a farew...
English: Cover caption: Prins et al. find that dys...Pseudohypertrophic Muscular Dystrophy is a dystrophinopathy ("The"� 1). The common name for this disease is Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, or DMD ("What"� 1).
Duchenne's is the most severe form of dystrophinopathy ("What"� 1). This dystrophy is characterized by certain symptoms which are not hard to notice.
Some symptoms of Duchenne's are curvature of the spine, abnormal heart function, inability to walk, mental impairment such as low intelligence, vision impairment, and hearing impairment ("Muscular"� 1). Other symptoms may be frequent falls, difficulty with skills such as running, hopping, or jumping, and skeletal and muscle deformities ("What"� 1). Symptoms are evident between the ages of 1 and 6 ("What 1"�).
This disorder only affects males and occurs in approximately 2 out of every 10,000 people ("What"� 1-2). DMD is inherited as an X-linked recessive trait ("Description"� 3). Therefore, females are...