melas syndrome is a mitochondrial disorder with progressive nature, because adequate treatment is not available. diagnosis of this mitochondrial disorder depends initially on clinical suspicion, which is strengthened by additional metabolic evidence of impaired oxidative metabolism such as high serum or c.s.f. lactate levels and confirmed by demonstration of mitochondrial abnormalities-in muscl...

BACKGROUND Core myopathies are a clinically and genetically heterogeneous group of congenital myopathies with the common defined histopathological feature of focally reduced oxidative activity on muscle biopsy. It has a low incidence, however, recent articles show broad clinical spectrum, suggesting that the real incidence should be considerably larger than previously described. Due to the impo...

Introduction: It is frequent in medical practice to have findings with normal aspects in histological muscle biopsies from patients with dermatomyositis (DM) or polymyositis (PM). This happens because, for example, the inflammatory infiltrate occurs in foci. Objectives: To evaluate the morphological and histological inflammatory infiltrate in various histological section levels. In addition, to...

OBJECTIVES To compare the muscle pathology findings among subgroups of idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM) patients, and to determine the correlations of muscle biopsy scores with muscle power and creatine kinase (CK). METHODS The medical records of IIM patients consisting of the demographic data, clinical parameters and laboratory conducted were retrospectively reviewed. Their initial m...

BACKGROUND In systemic lupus erythematosus, certain laboratory tests and evidence from muscle biopsy specimens of lymphocytic vasculitis reflect disease activity. A study was designed to determine if such indices predict respiratory lesions, and in particular whether the presence of vasculitis in quadriceps muscle reflects respiratory muscle function. METHODS Twenty seven 27 patients with sys...

A 35 year old lady presented with progressive spastic paraparesis and hyperintense signals in the spinal cord and brain. She was noted to have high titres of antithyroid antibodies and primary hypothyroidism. Her muscle biopsy showed perivascular lymphocytes around endomysial vessels. We highlight the association of spinal cord involvement and abnormal muscle biopsy in a case of Hashimotos ence...

A novel technique for preoperative MRI guided wire localization for targeted surgical excisional biopsy of muscle is described in a pediatric patient with juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM). This technique allows for preoperative localization of abnormalities seen only with MRI. Using this technique, the patient underwent successful targeted muscle biopsy for confirmation of the diagnosis and stagi...

Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) has been used extensively over several decades to reverse muscle atrophy during rehabilitation for spinal cord injury patients. The benefits of the technology are being expanded into other areas, and FES has been recently utilized for injury rehabilitation and performance enhancement in horses. Six retired horses (age from 10 to 17 yrs) that had been prev...