How many people are affected by congenital muscular dystrophy?
A precise and recent study on the frequency of this disorder in UK is not available, but we estimate that 1 baby every 20,000-50,000 is born with CMD. Is congenital muscular dystrophy inherited? Yes. The pattern of inheritance is known as ‘autosomal recessive’. This means that both parents are carriers of the condition (although clinically unaffected) and they have a risk of 25%, or 1 in 4, in each pregnancy of passing the condition on to their children. Occasionally a case may be ‘sporadic’ which means is a one-off with little risk of recurrence in other children. There is no accurate way of predicting who is and who is not a carrier. How many forms of congenital muscular dystrophy exist? CMD is a very heterogeneous group of conditions. These are generally grouped under two main types: • Children who only have muscle weakness involving all muscles but have normal intelligence • Children who have muscle weakness and learning difficulties, with or without seizures. Learning difficulties
