Muscular dystrophies and the role of dystrophin in their diagnosis

Muscular dystrophies [MD] traditionally refer to a group of genetically determined, progressive, degenerative disorders of the skeletal muscle. The most common disease manifestations being Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy [DMD] and Becker Muscular Dystrophy [BMD]. This descriptive study was carried out on 40 patients of muscular dystrophies, selected on clinical grounds and subjected to biochemical, morphological and immunohistochemical analysis. Muscle biopsies were taken from patients by an open method and formalin fixed paraffin embedded blocks were made. Haematoxylin and Eosin stain, PAS and Gomori's trichrome and immunohistochemical stains were conducted on the sections from these blocks. Dystrophin and beta - Spectrin antibodies were used for immunohistochemistry. Among the 40 cases of muscular dystrophy the above investigations were correlated with clinical findings to reach the final diagnosis in each case. In Pakistan the diagnosis of muscular dystrophies is still based on clinical grounds and CPK values only, however the present study has provided us an opportunity to combine clinical, biochemical, morphlogical and immunohistochemical evaluations of the patients with muscular dystrophies. It was concluded from this study that although muscular dystrophy can be diagnosed using clinical parameters and CPK levels, histochemistry and IHC can confirm and differentiate the various types of muscular dystrophy and make it possible to identify the female patients of DMD and BMD

Evaluation of four ELISA based immunoassays for the detection of IgM antibodies against dengue virus

Dengue fever is a problem of serious concern which is mainly transmitted by mosquito, Aedes aegypti. These days' different ELISA kits are used for the diagnosis of dengue fever. It was a validation study. Study was conducted in the Department of Immunology at University of Health Sciences, Lahore during the period of August 2009 to October 2009. In this study four ELISA kits [Human, Nova Tech, Vircell and DRG] were used to determine IgM antibodies against dengue fever in forty four patients who were labelled positive for dengue fever by different commercially available ELISA kits. Human ELISA kit gave most accurate results with respect to the agreement, sensitivity, specificity and K value. Human ELISA kit was found most reliable for the diagnosis of dengue fever