With an incidence of 1 out of 3,500 male births, Duchenne muscular dystrophy is one of the most common of the orphan or rare diseases. But, the effects of the disease, which causes death by the average age of 25, are some of the most destructive according to experts.
Orphan or rare diseases are defined in the United States as an illness that affects fewer than 200,000 people throughout the country. Duchenne is a subset of muscular dystrophy that occurs when a person has a genetic defect in which they cannot produce a protein that is present in muscle tissue, called dystrophin. It has the same worldwide incidence as it does in the United States, and may even have the same proportion of cases in the animal kingdom as well…
Read FULL ARTICLE by Michelle Castillo.
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