Who gets MG?
Estimates of the number of people affected by MG vary, ranging from 5 to 14 people per 100,000. It occurs in all ethnic groups and both sexes. It most commonly occurs in: • young adult women (under 40) • older men (over 60) MG can occur at any age. Children sometimes develop it as well. MG is not passed down through the family. You can’t “catch it” from someone who has it. The disease rarely occurs in more than one member of the same family. If a woman with MG becomes pregnant, sometimes the baby gets antibodies from the mother and has MG symptoms for a few weeks or months after birth. This is called neonatal myasthenia. The symptoms can be treated and the baby does not have permanent MG. A group of rare disorders called congenital myasthenic syndromes (CMS) can produce symptoms similar to MG. Unlike MG, these disorders are not autoimmune disorders but are caused by defective genes. Because of these genes, the nerve-muscle junctions in the body cannot work properly. CMS usually starts
