Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen Centre for Evidence Based Practice, Department of Rehabilitation, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Neuromuscul Disord. 2012 Apr;22(4):306-17. doi: 10.1016/j.nmd.2011.10.020. Epub 2011 Nov 30.
Responsive outcome measures are needed to follow the disease status of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) patients, as new therapeutic approaches become available for affected boys. Quantitative muscle ultrasound (QMUS) is potentially an attractive follow up tool for DMD because it reflects the severity of the dystrophic process without the need for invasive procedures, by quantifying echo intensity (i.e., mean grey level of muscle images) and muscle thickness. We performed a longitudinal follow-up of lower and upper extremity QMUS in 18 DMD patients and compared this with physical functioning in 11 of these patients. QMUS could be performed in every patient, and no patient was subjected to more than a total of 20min of ultrasound scanning time for this study. As expected we found a significant increase of echo intensity with age, reflecting increasing dystrophic muscle changes. This increase was related to ambulatory status, functional grading, muscle strength and motor ability. Our study establishes QMUS as a practical and child-friendly tool for the longitudinal follow up of DMD patients.
需要有响应性的结果测量来跟踪杜氏肌营养不良症(DMD)患者的疾病状况,因为新的治疗方法已经可用于受影响的男孩。定量肌肉超声(QMUS)可能是 DMD 的一种有吸引力的随访工具,因为它通过量化回声强度(即肌肉图像的平均灰度水平)和肌肉厚度,无需进行侵入性程序即可反映出进行性肌营养不良过程的严重程度。我们对 18 名 DMD 患者进行了下肢和上肢 QMUS 的纵向随访,并将其与其中 11 名患者的身体机能进行了比较。QMUS 可在每位患者中进行,并且为了这项研究,没有患者接受超过总共 20 分钟的超声扫描时间。正如预期的那样,我们发现回声强度随着年龄的增长而显著增加,反映出进行性肌营养不良变化的增加。这种增加与步行状态、功能分级、肌肉力量和运动能力有关。我们的研究确立了 QMUS 作为 DMD 患者纵向随访的实用且适合儿童的工具。