Neuromuscular disease

Inclusion Body Myositis is a neuro-muscular disease affecting people over fifty, mostly males, is characterized by progressive muscle weakness and atrophy in key muscles in the arms (forearm flexors) and the legs (quadriceps), resulting in severe disability. IBM is generally a slowly progressive disease and life expectancy isn’t significantly affected. Ted was diagnosed with IBM in 2012 when he was 68 years old, but his muscle biopsy showed that he has had it 10 to 15 years prior to the…

Morgellons disease is an interesting disease that is very rare and often hard to diagnose correctly. This particular disease is very hard to clarify. The symptoms can be different from varying patients. However, general symptoms include crawling senses under the skin, itching, black dots in the skin, thread-like fibers coming from the skin or underneath the skin, joint pain, trouble sleeping, panic attacks, memory loss and skin rashes. Not all patients have these symptoms but the two that almost…

spinal muscular atrophy (HCSMA) is proven to be an autosomal-dominate disease that affects most noticeably the Brittany spaniel (Pinter MJ, Waldeck RF, Wallace N, & Cork LC, Motor Unit Behavior in Canine Motor Neuron Disease, 1995). HCSMA originated as a spontaneous mutation in the Survivor Motor Neutron gene found in the purebred Brittany spaniel population (Ericsson. A & Rubin. C, 2012). Due to the co-dominate nature of the disease there are slight variation in the phenotype expressed in the…

referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease after Lou Gehrig, a great American baseball player whose career unfortunately ended abruptly due to this incurable degenerative disease. ALS is the deterioration of motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord that leads to muscle weakness. This significant decrease in muscle strength eventually becomes paralysis, and the majority of those with this awful disease die from respiratory failure. This is the most common neuromuscular disease and affects 12,000…

1. What are the functional classifications for the biceps and triceps muscles in the bicep curl movement? What type of contractions are the biceps and triceps performing during a bicep curl? There are two functional classifications for the biceps and triceps muscles, which are the following: agonists and antagonists. The agonist generates the most powerful force in the biceps, in comparison to the triceps. The Triceps focuses on protecting the muscles from hyperextending the arm, by using the…

Pharmacology- Practical based exercise Introduction/ aims Acetylcholine (ACH) is a neurotransmitter which operate in the brain, ACH are known as cholinergic because they are released from both the parasympathetic and sympathetic systems, (Colovic, 2013). There are drugs which look to copy these effects or inhibit them, they are known as cholinergic drugs. ACH has two types of receptors, nicotinic and muscarinic receptors. Nicotine acts as antagonists for nicotinic receptors, by blocking these…

involves testing how well and quickly a nerve can send electrical signals to begin contraction of skeletal muscles. The first step in muscle contraction is excitation of a skeletal muscle fiber by a nerve signal. The nerve signal must be sent to the neuromuscular junction to open the voltage-gated calcium channels. Just like in a muscle fiber, the neuron must reach threshold potential before the action potentials can be propagated down the neuron. After the threshold potential is reached,…

Figure 1. An EMG Tracing of Triceps and Biceps Muscles Co-activation. EMG signal produces an electrical activity of the muscle fibers active at a moment time. The electrical activity is measured in millivolts per milliseconds. The top channel shows the bicep EMG, while the bottom EMG correlates to the triceps contraction traces. Shown on the top graph, there are two periods of bicep activation, each last approximately 1.5ms. When the biceps are activated, it produces increasing amplitude peaks,…

Introduction: Temperature can affect the rate at which an action potential is generated to excite an action potential within a given skeletal muscle. Maximum contraction is the ability of the muscle to recruit and produce its greatest force during a contraction, and we can observe these effects by using a grip force transducer, which records the functional grip force of the hand. Therefore, the purpose of this lab was to discern how varying temperatures affect maximum contraction. I…

some people believe that vaccines given to young children can cause Autism, Ear infections, Asthma and ADHD. They also believe that vaccinated children are more likely to develop chronic diseases than those who are not vaccinated. Actually vaccinations are very important, because of immunization; some diseases that were a cause of millions of deaths a long time ago are now close to being extinct. In the 1950s Poliomyelitis was affecting over 35000 people each year, and now because of its…