We describe the case of a girl with a probable autosomal recessive form of nondystrophic hereditary myotonia whose clinical findings are more compatible with the dominant ones mainly myotonia congenita of Thomsen or myotonia fluctuans. Besides the clinical aspects of the atypical form presented by our patient, the efficacy of the more available drugs employed for the treatment of myotonia conge...

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to validate the immunohistochemical assay for the diagnosis of nondystrophic myotonia and to provide full clarification of clinical disease to patients in whom basic genetic testing has failed to do so. METHODS An immunohistochemical assay of sarcolemmal chloride channel abundance using 2 different ClC1-specific antibodies. RESULTS This method led t...

Clinical and electrical myotonia is caused by a small group of neuromuscular disorders. This article reviews myotonia and its differential diagnosis. The use of electrodiagnostic testing to evaluate the primary myotonic disorders (myotonic dystrophy and the nondystrophic myotonias) is also discussed.

Twenty-five Turkish patients with recessive myotonia congenita (RMC), 16 of whom had genetic confirmation, were studied. Nineteen had transient weakness. In the upper extremities, onset age of transient weakness was usually in the early teens. All untreated RMC patients had a compound muscle action potential decrement of > or =25%, usually above 50%, with repetitive nerve stimulation at 10/s fo...

Myotonia reflects a state of muscle fiber hyperexcitability. Impaired transmembrane conductance of either chloride or sodium ions results in myotonia. Myotonic disorders include the myotonic dystrophies and nondystrophic myotonias. Mutations in the genes encoding chloride (ClC-1) or sodium (SCN4A) channels expressed exclusively in skeletal muscle cause nondystrophic myotonias. Genetic defects i...

Myotonic dystrophy type 2 (DM2) is an autosomal dominant disorder with proximal weakness, muscle pain, and early-onset cataracts. In comparison with myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1), myotonia is less symptomatic, more proximal, and harder to detect during clinical and electrodiagnostic testing. Here we document the presence of trapezius myotonia in patients with DM2 (video on the Neurology® Web ...

Autosomal-dominantly inherited nondystrophic myotonic disorders are an interesting group of muscle diseases that provide considerable opportunity for future molecular genetic studies to identify the genes responsible for specific membrane functions. A family with such a myotonic disorder is described with features that are distinctly different from myotonia congenita and paramyotonia congenita....

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Mutations of the skeletal muscle sodium channel gene SCN4A, which is located on chromosome 17q23-25, are associated with various neuromuscular disorders that are labeled collectively as skeletal muscle sodium channelopathy. These disorders include hyperkalemic periodic paralysis (HYPP), hypokalemic periodic paralysis, paramyotonia congenita (PMC), potassium-aggravated myo...