Clinical aspects of myasthenia explained

Abstract

Myasthenia gravis and myasthenic syndromes are diseases of the neuromuscular junction. Autoantibodies and toxins to or mutations in one of the synaptic proteins are the main causes of dysfunction. Myasthenic phenotypes can be classified according to the basic aetiological mechanisms or divided depending on the clinical phenotype.

Keywords::

• Myasthenia gravis
• autoantibody
• phenotype
• neuromuscular junction
• mutation

Acknowledgements

We thank Umesh Badrising and Maarten Titulaer for careful reading of the text and Erik Niks for comments and preparing the figure.

Declaration of interest: We thank the Prinses Beatrix Foundation and Euromyasthenia EU grant no. 2005105 for financial support. The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.