Abstract
It is reported that the measurement of serum myoglobin (Mb) levels is useful to eval-uate the conditions of several kinds of diseases in which cardiac or skeletal muscles are damaged. We carried out the basic studies using Mb measurement kit (Eiken) by radioimmuno-assay (double antibody method) and measured serum Mb levels of progressive muscular dystrophy (PMD) and the other similar muscular diseases. Good results were obtained in the repeatability test, recovery test and dilution test. The serum Mb levels of normal adults (n=30), Duchenne type PMD (D-t, n=24), limb girdle type PMD (LG-t, n=14), facioscaplohumeral type PMD (FSH-t, n=1), congenital muscular dystrophy (CMD, n=3), myotonic dystrophy (MD, n=3) and the other muscular diseases (OMD, n=12) were 38.6±15.8 ng/ml, 479.5±522.7 ng/ml, 135.0±58.6 ng/ml, 48 ng/ml, 735±756 ng/ml, 93.7±15.5 ng/ml and 38.1+24.6 ng/ml (mean±SD), respectively. In D-t and LG-t, the serum Mb levels were significantly high (both p<0.001). Furthermore, we studied the correlation with the serum Mb and the serum creatine phosphokinase levels that were measured at the same time in PMD and the coefficients of correlation were r=0.667 (p<0.001) in D-t, r=0.889 (p<0.001) in LG-t, r=0.600 in CMD, r=0.885 in MD and r=0.705 (p<0.05) in OMD. <
In muscular diseases, the measurements of serum Mb levels were useful for the di-agnosis of neurogenic origin or muscular origin, and for the differential diagnosis of types of PMD, and could tell us the condition of the damaged muscles.
