We suggest that expression profiling will provide important information to improve our understanding of the molecular basis of laminin alpha-2 positive MDC.
Patients with a partial reduction of merosin due to mutations in the laminin-α2 chain gene usually present with a mild form of congenital muscular dystrophy or a limb-girdle-like muscular dystrophy.
An early onset muscular dystrophy with diaphragmatic involvement, early respiratory failure and secondary alpha2 laminin deficiency unlinked to the LAMA2 locus on 6q22.
We conducted a two-year pilot study to evaluate feasibility, reliability, and validity of various outcome measures, particularly the Motor Function Measure 32, in 33 subjects with COL6-RD and LAMA2-RD.
Blocking apoptosis ameliorates muscle disease in some mouse models of muscular dystrophy such as laminin α-2-deficient mice, but not in others such as dystrophin-deficient (mdx) mice.
Mice with a homozygous mutation in Lama2 (dy2J mice) express a nonpolymerizing form of laminin-211 (Lm211) and are a model for ambulatory-type Lmα2-deficient muscular dystrophy.
This laminin-α2 deficient mutant fish represents a novel disease model to develop therapies for modulating splicing defects in congenital muscular dystrophies and to restore the muscle function in human patients with CMD.
This study demonstrates a wide clinical spectrum of LAMA2-related muscular dystrophy and its prevalence in an LGMD2 cohort, which indicates that LAMA2muscular dystrophy should be included in the LGMD2 nomenclature.
Interestingly, one of the remaining tumors has a deletion in LAMA2, bringing the number of ONBs with deletions of genes involved in the development of muscular dystrophies to 13 or 93%.
<i>L</i><i>AMA2</i>-related muscular dystrophy (<i>LAMA2</i> MD or MDC1A) is the most frequent form of early-onset, fatal congenital muscular dystrophies.