AVI Offers Glimmer of Hope for Muscular Dystrophy, Says UW
Neuroscientist Jeff Chamberlain (Page 6 of 6) of respiratory
failure. So your major breathing muscles, the diaphragm and the
intercostals between your ribs, those muscles start failing.
Sometimes the breathing rate can plummet during the night
because of weakness, and sometimes, the kids will just die from
low oxygen. More commonly, what happens is they have a hard time
coughing and fighting off respiratory infections. So they’ll get
pneumonia and die of that. So what has gotten around that? One
has been putting kids on respirators at night. That appears to
be adding years to their lifespan. And more aggressive use of
antibiotics once they start developing respiratory infections.
If kids don’t die of respiratory failure, they tend to die of
heart failure. People are suddenly coming to that
realization—none of these kids used to get referred to
cardiologists. It turns out putting them on beta blockers, and
some very simple drugs like that to treat hear