Talk:Progressive muscular atrophy

In
In the past several weeks I have had periodic episodes of mild to severe and complete weakness in my right arm and right leg. For hours at a time I have been unable to even stand or walk using my right leg. I am trying to determine what is wrong with me as I have no health insurance to cover seeing a neurologist. Motor neuron disease seems to fit my symptoms but I'm sure there are other diseases that would fit these symptoms as well. Any suggestions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.219.227.237 (talk • contribs)


 * WebMD, eMedicine.com or your local hospital. It is absolutely NOT recommended that you use Wikipedia to self-diagnose. Pairadox 02:16, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Progressive muscular atrophy = Spinal muscular atrophy
Progressive muscular atrophy is a synonym of spinal muscular atrophy. This page should be merged with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinal_muscular_atrophy —Preceding unsigned comment added by Timothy Cooper (talk • contribs) 10:07, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, that's not accurate. SMA is an inherited condition; PMA is sporadic. SMA is most common in juveniles and is slower than PMA, which is often symmetrical and (although slower than ALS) is still often fatal in 5-10 years, with an onset in middle age. To be clear, some neurologists do refer to PMA as a "purely spinal type" motor neurone disease or other similar terms but even this is inaccurate as PMA affects the lower motor neurones below the synapse with the anterior horn cells of the spinal cord. I'm happy to discuss further if that would be helpful. All the best, --PaulWicks (talk) 17:13, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Re Progressive muscular atrophy
I have researched PMA and believe that the progression is not necessarily slower than ALS. It would appear that the PMA can progress at slower, the same or faster rates of deterioration. You must really have citations when submitting things on the site as it can give people false hope. T Langmead —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.198.220.130 (talk) 12:27, 17 March 2009 (UTC)