[Morphology of metabolic myopathies]

Abstract

While muscular lesions in endocrine or metabolic diseases are fairly common primary metabolic myopathies are rare. In these, the metabolic fault is in the muscle fibre itself, which takes on a vacuolated appearance. In the majority of these myopathies there is an abnormality of the glycogen or fat metabolism due to the absence of a specific enzyme in most cases. By contrast, the pathogenesis of the so called mitochondrial myopathies is not yet well understood.