Talk:Muscle atrophy

age - a natural cause of atrophy
Obviously there is a natural process of decreasing muscle strength due to age. It would be welcome, that some competent author could treat this issue. --Werfur (talk) 18:43, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Merge dystrophy, muscle atrophy and muscle weakness
The terms are related, and the articles all quite short, especially the first, since details for specific variations are found on other pages. --nkayesmith 02:06, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Here are the problems:

1) muscle weakness can be caused either by loss of muscle (atrophy), or by abnormal muscle (as found in dystrophy & in the inflammatory myosities).

2) muscular dystrophy is completely distinct from atrophy - it is caused by a primary mutation in a muscle protein - and rather than resulting in atrophy, the muscle attempts to compensate by getting bigger (compensatory hypertrophy)...

so it would be quite inappropriate to put dystrophy into an article on muscle atrophy.

If you want to merge these issues together, one could have a large article on "muscle disease", but that would go beyond the usual length of a Wikipedia article.

So, in summary, I would keep these distinct.

Gacggt 13:16, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I know, my idea was to have them all in one article ("Muscle Disease, as you say"). I'm not sure it would be too large...maybe I'll try on a user subpage. My idea is to have 'summaries' of broad topic (atrophy, dystrophy, weakness) and then link to specific causes and diseases (muscular dystrophy, etc)

I was especially keen to merge the dystrophy article (note, I'm not talking about the muscular dystrophy article, only dystrophy), as it's very short. If we were to expand it, it would repeat what other articles are saying, which would not necessarily be a bad thing, we could summarize the broad types of dystrophies in the article (1. Muscular Dystrophy 2. Crps ?? - is that a broad category), although we'd need to define 'the broad categories' first. -- nkayesmith 21:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Although if we are talking about dystrophy, not muscular dystrophy, it has no place in muscle diseases. Perhaps it should be merged with atrophy ?? That's probably a better idea, as atrophy already has a bit about dystrophy. Any ideas, before I change tags (merge atrophy with dystrophy, merge muscle atrophy will muscle disease)? --nkayesmith 22:34, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Please do not merge muscle atrophy with muscle disease...    muscle atrophy occurs in a varitey of conditions, as mentioned... such as cancer, AIDS, bedrest, aging, etc...  so it is much broader than "muscle disease" - it is a co-morbidity of many other types of diseases as well, which is why I started the page.

As for atrophy & dystrophy, again these are distinct concepts.

I really do not understand why you are so keen to merge things which should be distinct.

Gacggt 23:41, 9 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Hello Gacggt, I put up back the merge info as the three articles don't explain why they are supposed to be on their own. I'm not against three separate articles, but please change the contents so other users directly see the difference between the three.
 * Also, please remove the merge info not only from this article, but also from all the other articles that are affected.
 * --Abdull 22:25, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Muscle atrophy or Muscular atrophy?
Should the title of this article not correctly be Muscular atrophy?

Or is this yet another example of the lamentable atrophy of correct English language use in America? ;-J

Actually given that WP likes to be grammatically correct, I'm seriously asking about the title.  David_FLXD  (Talk) 10:18, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

The correct term, even in the UK, is "muscle atrophy", since it refers to decrease in the size of muscles. "Muscular atrophy" might be more in parallel with "muscular dystrophy" or other similar terms, but for some reason the term of art in this case is "muscle atrophy". Gacggt (talk) 04:04, 8 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Shall I put in this talkpage "US article" or "UK article"? Qwertyxp2000 (talk &#124; contribs) 08:45, 28 July 2015 (UTC)