Benign muscular dystrophy: risk calculation in families with consanguinity.

This report concerns two families in which the index patients are sporadic cases of a benign form of muscular dystrophy. In both families the sisters of the patients have married a close relative. The respective risks for a child of these consanguineous marriages being affected with either X linked Becker muscular dystrophy or autosomal recessive limb girdle muscular dystrophy is calculated using pedigree information, results of serum creatine kinase determinations, and also, in one family, results of DNA typing using RFLPs from the short arm of the X chromosome.