Mitochondrial changes in skeletal muscle in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and other neurogenic atrophies—a comment

Abstract

Sir, We read with great interest the article by Krasnianski et al . (2005) recently published in your journal. The authors report the absence of specific alterations of respiratory chain activities in skeletal muscle of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and neurogenic atrophies (NA). While the data concerning NA patients are completely in line with our previous observations on six patients with spinal muscular atrophy and two patients with Tay–Sachs syndrome (cf. Vielhaber et al ., 1999), a considerable discrepancy exists between this report and data on ALS biopsies reported by our group (cf. Wiedemann et al ., 1998; Vielhaber et al ., 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003). To explain the contradictory findings, we would like to comment on differences in the investigated patient population and on the applied methods: 1. The ALS patients included in the study by Krasnianski et al . (2005) had a mean disease duration of 18 months (range …