Severe hypokalemia can have life-threatening complications such as significant muscle weakness, ileus, rhabdomyolysis, and respiratory failure. Here, we report a case of 33-year-old male who presented with worsening lower extremity weakness falls after smoking marijuana for six months. Initial labs showed severe hypokalemia. EKG was remarkable first-degree AV block, widened QRS complex, ST segm...

A patient is described with a novel syndrome characterised by progressive muscular weakness, contractures, pupillary muscle dysfunction, and skeletal deformity. The main myopathological feature was an abundance of tubular aggregates in both type I and type II muscle fibres. Myopathies in which tubular aggregates are the defining feature are rare and either present with progressive muscle weakne...

Respiratory dysfunction from multiple sclerosis (MS) is most commonly of insidious onset and related to progressive respiratory muscle weakness [1]. Disorders of respiratory muscle coordination are poorly recognised and challenging to diagnose. We present a case of a patient with MS and no clear muscle weakness whose dyspnoea was associated with a disorder of respiratory muscle control. The pot...

Skeletal muscle function is frequently impaired in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD),1 even in those persons affected by mild disease.2 Whether the abnormalities are mainly due to deconditioning are more related to a systemic effect of the disease, or, indeed, result from its treatment with corticosteroids is still a matter for discussion. The main abnormalities that ar...

BACKGROUND Skeletal muscle weakness in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is an important predictor of poor prognosis, but the molecular mechanisms of muscle weakness in COPD have not been fully elucidated. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of histone deacetylases(HDAC) in skeletal muscle weakness in COPD. METHODS AND RESULTS Twelve COPD patients, 8 smokers without C...

Respiratory muscle dysfunction may develop rapidly in critically ill ventilated patients and is associated with increased morbidity, length of intensive care unit stay, costs, and mortality. This review briefly discusses the pathophysiology of respiratory muscle dysfunction in intensive care unit patients and then focuses on strategies that prevent the development of muscle weakness or, if weak...

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of botulinum toxin type-A (BTX-A) induced quadriceps weakness on micro-structural changes in knee cartilage of New Zealand White (NZW) rabbits. DESIGN Fifteen rabbits were divided randomly into an experimental and a sham control group. Each group received a unilateral single quadriceps muscle injection either with saline (sh...

We have read with interest the letter by EWIG [1] in relation to our article [2]. According to his opinion, our study raises an unproductive debate about the usefulness of bronchoscopic sampling techniques in ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP). As it is well known, most of the studies dealing with the diagnostic efficacy of bronchoscopic sampling techniques in VAP include a large percentage ...

Muscle weakness is a common neurological symptom but is rarely due to hypokalaemia consequent on renal disease, as in the patients reported here. Two types of acidosis occur in renal disease. The more common and unfortunately incurable is that complicating chronic renal failure. Less common, but since it is treatable, more important, is renal tubular acidosis. That described by Lightwood (1935)...

An inherited dystrophin deletion without muscle weakness Deletions of the dystrophin gene are known to be present in approximately 60 to 70%6 of Duchenne (DMD) and Becker (BMD) patients. We describe a boy and his maternal grandfather who both have raised creatine kinase levels and an identical deletion including exons 14-18 of the dystrophin gene but no muscle weakness. Muscle histology is norm...