Degenerative Disc Disease
The vertebral column acts as a support system for the whole of the human body, it gives our body shape, support, stability and allows nervous impulses to be travelled through the column to allow movement. Although this provides support for the body, it needs to be able to keep its shape and stand upright by itself, it does this by containing spinal discs between each pair of vertebrae, the discs are composed of fibrocartilage and keep the vertebrae together in the spinal column, it also allows for some movement and prevents bones from rubbing against each other.
Degenerative disc disease is a skeletal disorder that causes the spinal discs in the vertebrae to deteriorate, losing their mass, elasticity, flexibility and …show more content…
Dystrophin is a protein which the muscle contains which is vital for the normal function of muscles, all three types of muscle (skeletal, smooth, cardiac) contain this protein to allow them to function properly. The absence of the dystrophin protein causes the muscles to deteriorate over time, sometimes the muscles deteriorate so much, it can leave the person suffering from the disorder with debilitating disabilities.
The disorder can start off by affecting muscle in a particular region, which could then spread to affecting muscles all over the human body. In some cases, muscular dystrophy can become extremely dangerous as if it begins to affect the normal function of cardiac muscle and begins to weaken it, it can lead to other disorders like heart disease, heart attacks and difficulty breathing, these problems could then potentially lead to death.
This disorder originates from genetic mutations within the human DNA which causes the levels of the protein dystrophin to decrease, which then affects the way the muscles function causing them to weaken steadily leading to life-endangering disabilities. If there is a dangerously low amount of the protein dystrophin, it can lead to disabilities of the brain and learning