This book provides a resource on the etiology and pathogenesis as well as diagnosis and treatment of diseases of skeletal muscles.

Preface; Foreword John Walton; Part I. The Scientific Basis of Muscle Disease: 1. Structure and function of muscle fibres and motor units Mary Kay Floeter; 2. Myogenic precursor cells Miranda D. Grounds and Frederic Relaix; 3. Biochemical and molecular basis of muscle disease Susan Brown and Cecilia Jimenez-Mallebera; Part II. Investigation of Muscle Disease: 4. Electromyography and related techniques Eric Logigian and Emma Ciafaloni; 5. Histopathology and immunoanalysis of muscle Caroline A. Sewry and Maria J. Molnar; 6. Ultrastructural study of muscle Anders Oldfors; 7. Diagnostic imaging of muscle Eugenio Mercuri and Marianne de Visser; Part III. Description of Muscle Disease; Section 1. General Aspects: 8. The clinical assessment and a guide to classification of the myopathies David Hilton-Jones and John T. Kissel; 9. The principles of molecular therapies for muscle diseases George Karpati and Renald Gilbert; Section 2. Specific Diseases: 10. Dystrophinopathies Michael Sinnreich; 11. Muscular dystrophies presenting with proximal muscle weakness Mariz Vainzof and Kate Bushby; 12. Dystrophies and myopathies of early childhood onset Carsten G. Bönnemann and Enrico Bertini; 13. Congenital myopathies Carina Wallgren-Pettersson and Nigel G. Laing; 14. Muscle diseases with prominent muscle contractures Gisèle Bonne and Anne K. Lampe; 15. Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy Shannon L. Venance and Rabi Tawil; 16. Distal myopathies Bjarne Udd; 17. Oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy Bernard Brais; 18. Myotonic dystrophy John Day and Charles Thornton; 19. Mitochondrial myopathies and related disorders Patrick F. Chinnery and Eric A. Shoubridge; 20. Metabolic myopathies John Vissing, Stefano DiDonato and Franco Taroni; 21. Muscle ion channelopathies and related disorders Bertrand Fontaine and Michael G. Hanna; 22. Inflammatory and dysimmune myopathies Marinos C. Dalakas and George Karpati; 23. Myasthenia gravis and myasthenic syndromes [autoimmune and genetic] Amelia Evoli, Hanns Lochmüller and Violeta Mihaylova; 24. Endocrine and toxic myopathies Zohar Argov and Frank L. Mastaglia; 25. Myofibrillar myopathy Duygu Selcen; 26. Hereditary inclusion body myopathies Zohar Argov and Stella Mitrani-Rosenbaum; 27. Other myopathies Giovanni Meola and Michael Swash.