History
The deficiency was the first metabolic myopathy to be recognized, when Dr. McArdle described the first case in a 30-year-old man who always experienced pain and weakness after exercise. Dr. McArdle noticed this patient’s cramps were electrically silent and his venous lactate levels failed to increase upon ischemic exercise. (The ischemic exercise consists of the patient squeezing a hand dynamometer at maximal strength for a specific period of time, usually a minute, with a blood pressure cuff, which is placed on the upper arm and set at 250 mmHg, blocking blood flow to the exercising arm.) Notably, this is the same phenomenon that occurs when muscle is poisoned by iodoacetate, a substance that blocks breakdown of glycogen into glucose and prevents the formation of lactic acid. Dr. McArdle accurately concluded that the patient had a disorder of glycogen breakdown that specifically affected skeletal muscle. The associated enzyme deficiency was discovered in 1959 by W. F. H. M. Mommaerts et al.
Read more about this topic: Glycogen Storage Disease Type V
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. All other history defeats itself.
In Beverly Hills ... they don’t throw their garbage away. They make it into television shows.
Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.”
—Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876)
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)