Muscular dystrophy – an evolving concept

Abstract Muscular dystrophy is one of the fastest growing fields in medicine, at both the clinical and laboratory level. Over the last 50 years or so, many important innovations in medical science have actually been initiated in studies of muscular dystrophy (Emery and Emery 1995). For example, the first application in medicine of discriminant function statistical analysis was in the 1950s for resolving clinical and genetic heterogeneity in these diseases. A little later the first application of Bayseian statistics was in risk calculations in muscular dystrophy, a statistical method of reverse genetics or, more precisely, positional cloning. This technique has subsequently been applied with great success to other forms of dystrophy as well as to many other genetic disorders.