Essay --

Spinal Muscular Atrophy, also known as â€Å"SMA† is a genetic and also a motor neuron disease that affects the area of the nervous system that controls your voluntary muscle movements such as walking, crawling, and swallowing. When someone acquires this condition their muscles start to shrink as a cause to the muscles not receiving signals from the nerve cells in the spine that control function. Spinal Muscular Atrophy is a rare but serious condition. Spinal Muscular Atrophy affects about 8 out of every 100,000 live births and also causes death among more babies than any other genetic disease out there. About one in every forty people has this gene in them but may not have SMA so they are a genetic carrier. But in order for a child to have SMA, both parents have to carry the mutated gene and passed it to the child. Therefore this causes the child to have double copies of the abnormal gene. About 1 in 40 men and 1 in 80 women are carriers of the gene. Survival Motor Neurons are a protein that is produced by the survival motor neuron gene 1. The SMN protein is found all over the body, especially containing high levels in the spinal cord. This protein is important for maintaining specialized nerve cells called motor neurons that are located in the spinal cord and brainstem. When a person have An abnormal or missing SMN1 it causes serious problems due to the fact it isn’t receiving the proper communication from these cells resulting in nerve cells shrinking and over time dying. SMA is broken down into having four types. In order to determine the type you have is based on the physical achievement because each person is different. SMA is not a progressive disease, although over time people with this lose ability to coordinate due ... ...can see if this condition runs in the family. A physical examination is a good way to tell is there is any type of muscle weakness or spinal curvature. Treatment for Spinal Muscular Atrophy is currently unavailable to correct this condition. But a person can take other steps to try to help comfort the situation they are in but there is no stopping it. Physical therapy is important because it can help work the muscle to prevent contraction of them. Breathing machines are an important to have because a lot of trouble falls under the breathing when the weakness of these muscles occurs. In conclusion there are a lot of conditions to be aware of that people don’t really think of. It is important to take precautions and pay attention to symptoms and conditions are body shows us. And get educated about different disease out there to protect our families and ourselves.