DUCHENNE Muscular Dystrophy is one of the most common fatal genetic disorders to affect children around the world. Approximately one in every 3,500 boys worldwide is afflicted with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy with 20,000 new cases reported each year in the developed world. It is a devastating and currently incurable muscle-wasting disease, associated with specific inborn errors in the gene that codes for dystrophin, a protein that plays a key structural role in muscle fibre function. Symptoms usually appear in male children before the age of five. By age 10, braces may be required for walking, and most patients are confined to a wheelchair by age 12.
Eventually, this progresses to complete paralysis and increasing difficulty in breathing, requiring ventilation. The condition is terminal, and death usually occurs before the age of 30.