Single skinned muscle fibers in Duchenne muscular dystrophy generate normal force.

We measured the intrinsic mechanical properties and protein content of single skinned muscle fibers obtained from patients who had Duchenne muscular dystrophy. To check for possible nonspecific changes caused by muscle disease per se, we also studied the properties of muscle fibers obtained from patients exhibiting severe muscle weakness due to polymyositis. Relative to control fibers obtained from 4 patients with normal or nonmyopathic muscle, we found no significant changes in the ability of muscle fibers from the patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy or polymyositis to generate active tension in response to calcium or resting tension in response to stretch. In addition, we found no significant changes in the concentrations of the major contractile proteins myosin and actin, of the elastic protein titin, or of the structural proteins nebulin and alpha-actinin. In contrast, immunocytochemical studies showed that dystrophin was absent in the biopsy specimens from the patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, but localized at the cell membrane in all of the other muscle biopsy specimens used in this study. These results indicate that myofibrils assemble and function normally in Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Therefore, the absence of dystrophin, which is the primary biochemical defect in this disease, leads to clinical weakness by causing the breakdown of muscle fibers that were once capable of generating normal force, while the surviving fibers exhibit normal contractility.