Myopathy is a result of a weakened or non-functioning skeletal muscle. There are various levels of severity seen in the myopathy spectrum, ranging from lethal and debilitating conditions to relatively mild ones. “Myopathy” simply means muscle disease (myo- Greek “muscle” + pathos -pathy Greek “suffering”). Myopathies can result from several different disease processes including endocrine, inflammatory, infectious, drug- and toxin-induced,  metabolic and directly extracellular matrix related. Myopathies can be severe and often are progressive, especially if they affect the muscle’s regenerative properties or are progressively degenerative, as is the case with muscular dystrophies.

There are several different types and hallmarks of myopathies, as illustrated by the image below:

From http://www.pathguy.com/

Muscle cells have mesenchymal origin and so it is not surprising that myopathies can also be associated with skeletal dysplasias. If you would like to know more about this, please have a look at our review.