Peripheral neuropathy of mitochondrial myopathies

Peripheral neuropathy has attracted relatively little attention in mitochondrial myopathy. However, mitochondrial myopathies are clinically heterogeneous disorders that can affect multiple systems including peripheral nerves other than the skeletal muscle. In addition to the survey of the literature, we studied 6 cases of mitochondrial myopathy with peripheral neuropathy; 3 cases of oligo-systemic involvement confined mainly to skeletal muscles and peripheral nerves, and 3 cases of multi-systemic involvement diagnosed as myoclonus epilepsy with ragged-red fibers (MERRF) or mitochondrial myopathy, encephalopathy, lactic acidosis and stroke-like episodes (MELAS). This study suggests that peripheral neuropathy may be relatively common and has similar clinical and laboratory features in a broad spectrum of mitochondrial myopathies. The clinical manifestation is usually of mild sensorimotor neuropathy with frequent subclinical involvement. Sensory disturbances are more evident than manifestations of motor neuropathy which is usually subclinical. It is also noteworthy that there exist some cases of oligo-systemic involvement, which present with peripheral neuropathy as main clinical manifestations. Electrophysiological findings include decreased nerve conduction velocities and neuropathic electromyograms. Peripheral nerves show loss of myelinated fibers, particularly of large ones, and the remaining fibers have disproportionately thin myelin sheaths with or without onion-bulb formation. Thus the pathological process is axonal degeneration with demyelination resulting from involvement of both neurons (axons) and Schwann cells.