Experimental progressive muscular dystrophy and its treatment with high doses anabolizing agents

We are still a long way from discovering an unequivocal pathogenetic interpretation of progressive muscular dystrophy in man. Noteworthy efforts have been made in the experimental field; a recessive autosomic form found in the mouse seems to bear the closest resemblance to the human form from the genetic point of view. Myopathy due to lack of vitamin E and myopathy induced by certain viruses have much in common anatomically and pathologically with the human form. The authors induced myodystrophy in the rat by giving it a diet lacking in vitamin E. The pharmacological characteristics of vitamin E and the degenerative changes brought about by its deficiency, especially in the muscles, are illustrated. It is thus confirmed that the histological characteristics of myopathic rat muscle induced experimentally are extraordinarily similar to those of human myopathy as confirmed during biopsies performed at the Orthopaedic Traumatological Centre, Florence. The encouraging results obtained in various authoratative departments in myopathic patients by using anabolizing steroids have encouraged the authors to investigate the beneficial effects of one anabolizing agent (Dianabol, CIBA) at high doses in rats rendered myopathic by a diet deficient in vitamin E. In this way they obtained appreciable changes in body weight (increased from 50 to 70 g after forty days at a dose of 5 mg per day of anabolizing agent), but most of all they found histological changes due to "regenerative" changes in the muscle tissue, which however maintained its myopathic characteristics in the control animals that were not treated with the anabolizing agent. The authors conclude by affirming the undoubted efficacy of the anabolizing steroids in experimental myopathic disease, but they have reservations as to the transfer of the results into the human field, where high dosage cannot be carried out continuously because of the effects of the drug on virility; because the tissue injury too often occurs at an irreversible stage vis-a-vis the "regeneration" of the muscle tissue; and finally because the dystrophic injurious agent is certainly not the lack of vitamin E but something as yet unknown.