The authors say the deficits found in the mental functioning of children with DMD put them at risk for learning disabilities, though they don't mean a child with DMD will necessarily develop learning disabilities. Children can often develop strategies to compensate for limitations imposed by a poor working verbal memory, they say. The study confirms recent findings that the deficits in intellectual functioning are limited to a specific type. It overturns earlier speculations that DMD might cause overall mental dullness or that social or psychological factors were to blame for observed difficulties in school performance and reading. The researchers say the reason for the deficits may be a lack of dystrophin in the brain.
Brain dystrophin differs slightly from muscle dystrophin in structure and in function.
Hinton and colleagues are recruiting families with DMD, especially those who have at least one child with DMD and one or more children without it, for further study. Because the study's travel budget is limited, subjects should be from the New York area. In the Aug. 8 issue of Neurology, researchers at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., review the case records of 57 people with MG who took the immunosuppressant cyclo-sporine between 1987 and 1999 for an average of three and a half years each. The study team included Donald Sanders, who directs the MDA clinic at Duke. The study's authors, who include Julie Rowin, an MDA clinic co-director at the hospital, say the patient was able to reduce dosages of all other medications to tolerable levels and return to work.