Duchenne muscular dystrophy: alpha-dystroglycan immunoexpression in skeletal muscle and cognitive performance

• Autor(a) principal: Pereira,Conceição Campanario da Silva
• Data de Publicação: 2005
• Outros Autores: Kiyomoto,Beatriz Hitomi, Cardoso,Ricardo, Oliveira,Acary Souza Bulle
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Arquivos de neuro-psiquiatria (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0004-282X2005000600015
• topic: Duchenne muscular dystrophy; alpha-dystroglycan; cognitive impairment; dystrophin

The Duchenne muscular systrophy (DMD) is a muscular dystrophy with cognitive impairment present in 20-30% of the cases. In the present study, in order to study the relationship between the alpha-dystroglycan (alpha-DG) immunostaining in skeletal muscle and cognitive performance in DMD patients, 19 were assessed. Twelve patients performed the intelligence quotient (IQ) below the average. Among the 19 patients, two were assessed by the Stanford-Binet test and 17 by Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III (WISC-III). Nine patients performed a verbal IQ below the average, only three patients performed an average verbal IQ. The muscle biopsies immunostained with antibodies to alpha-DG showed that 17 patients presented a low expression, below 25% of the total fibers. Two patients presented alpha-DG immunostaining above 40% and an IQ within the average. No significant statistical relationship was demonstrated among total IQ, verbal IQ and execution IQ and alpha-DG immunostaining at these patients muscle samples.