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Clinical and Electromyographic Studies

Grahame A. Wise, MB, MRACP; Michael P. McQuillen, MD

Arch Neurol. 1970;22(6):556-565.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

SOME 15% of infants born to mothers with myasthenia gravis develop respiratory and feeding difficulties and often more generalized weakness, which responds to cholinergic drugs.¹ Symptoms appear within 72 hours of birth and persist for several days to three months.² This form of myasthenia does not recur later in life.³ The implication is that a factor influencing neuromuscular transmission (NMT) crosses the placenta, and that this factor, or its effect persists for many weeks without leaving a permanent defect.⁴

There are two accounts of electromyographic (EMG) studies of such infants.^5,6 Studies of NMT in normal newborns^5,7 suggest that their neuromuscular junction functions with smaller reserves than the adult. Trains of repetitive stimuli are poorly sustained, and recovery after a train is delayed.

We have conducted serial EMG studies in an infant with the syndrome, an unaffected infant of a myasthenic mother, and three . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Lexington, Ky

From the Department of Neurology, University of Kentucky Medical Center, Lexington, Ky.

Footnotes
Submitted for publication Nov 17, 1969; accepted Jan 5, 1970.

Read in part before the annual meeting of the National Medical Advisory Board, the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation, Inc., New York, Dec 6, 1968, and the 94th annual meeting of the American Neurological Association, Los Angeles, June 10, 1969.

Reprint requests to Department of Neurology, University of Kentucky Medical Center, Lexington, Ky 40506 (Dr. Wise).

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