Medicine: Wasting Muscles

Medical science has a jawbreaking name but no treatment and no sign of a cure for a mysterious wasting of the muscles. The disease called progressive muscular dystrophy is by no means rare: estimates of U.S. victims range from 100,000 to 200,000. Last week, the recently formed Muscular Dystrophy Association met in Manhattan, decided to try to raise $250,000, largely to push research by Dr. Ade T. Milhorat at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. Its slogan: “Give hope to the hopeless.”

So little is known about muscular dystrophy that doctors cannot even agree on how many kinds there are. But two main types are recognized. The first attacks its victims in childhood, usually between the ages of three and six, and is transmitted through the mother by a recessive gene, nearly always to boys. Treacherous in its onset (seldom giving pain as a warning) and insidious in its advance as it weakens muscle after muscle, childhood dystrophy usually proves fatal before the 20th year.

Closely related, but striking more often at adolescents and adults, is the form of muscular dystrophy to which men & women are almost equally subject. The facial and shoulder muscles are weakened first; the forearms and hands are less likely to be affected. The patient may live for many years, severely handicapped.

Dr. Milhorat and other researchers have found that in experiments with rabbits the disease may be brought on by withholding vitamin E from the diet, and shut off by giving the vitamin. But humans, for some unknown reason, do not react so simply: they may have plenty of vitamin E in their diets, while their muscles, unable to use it, wither away.