Spinal Muscular Atrophy causes symptoms diagnosis medical treatment guide
SMA, Spinal Muscular Atrophy is a genetic disease that causes muscle weakness and fatal death on extreme conditions. It is one of the inherited diseases.
Causes of Spinal Muscular Atrophy
How Spinal Muscular Atrophy is caused?
SMA is a group of muscular weakness diseases. Statistics shows that the ratio of SMA is 4:100000 among the healthy people.
Werdnig Hoffman disease is the name given to the SMA 1 form of spinal muscular atrophy. It is the most severe form of the disease that is found in the infants. Such inherited genetic family is prone to serious chain of disorders.
Symptoms of SMA
What are the possible symptoms of Spinal Muscular Atrophy?
Major symptoms found in infants are:
Difficulty in breathing and feeding, poor muscle tone etc. Infants are seen very weak and less head balance.
For a child, the symptoms are posture worsening, speech through nose called as nasal speech and respiratory infections.
Diagnosis methods
Following are the test to conclude the signs of SMA.
CPK levels
DNA test
Electromyography
Muscle biopsy
Spinal MRI scan
Treatment and medication guides
Medicines to treat this genetic disorder are not available yet since Spinal Muscular Atrophy is Incurable disease.
But physiotherapy is suggested to treat contracted muscles and prevent further muscle weakness. Care support is must treatment to the patients while monitoring the respiratory infections.
