Pathological features of muscular disorders can be classified into four different categories: muscular dysfunction without obvious morphological change, change in size of muscle fibers, partial structural change within the fibers and the destruction of muscle fibers. In the present study, in order to clarify pathogenesis of these changes, the correlation between muscle metabolism and these disorders was studied in 308 cases with various muscular disturbances with histological, histochemical, electron microscopic, electrophysiological and biochemical procedures. Simultaneous studies on experimental muscle disorders in animals were performed and results of both clinical and experimental studies were compared. Among them, the pathogenesis of the reduction in size of the fibers and that of muscle destruction are reported in this paper.
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