Symptoms
The symptoms vary greatly depending on the SMA type involved, the stage of the disease and individual factors and commonly include:
- Areflexia, particularly in extremities
- Overall muscle weakness, poor muscle tone, limpness or a tendency to flop (the "floppy baby" syndrome)
- Difficulty achieving developmental milestones, difficulty sitting/standing/walking
- In infants: adopting of a frog-leg position when sitting (hips abducted and knees flexed)
- Loss of strength of the pulmonary muscles: weak cough, weak cry (infants), accumulation of secretions in the lungs or throat, respiratory distress
- Bell-shaped torso (caused by using only abdominal muscles for respiration)
- Clenched fists with sweaty hands
- Head often tilted to one side, even when lying down
- Fasciculations (twitching) of the tongue
- Difficulty sucking or swallowing, poor feeding
- Arthrogryposis (multiple congenital contractures)
- Weight lower than normal
Read more about this topic: Spinal Muscular Atrophy
Famous quotes containing the word symptoms:
“Not being a K.N. [Know-Nothing] I am left as a sort of waif on the political sea with symptoms of a mild sort towards Black Republicanism.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant; fail to use them and it is weak.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)