Cap disease - a failure in the correct muscle fibre formation

Four unrelated patients are reported with muscle hypotonia, weakness, skeletal dysmorphism and respiratory insufficiency since childhood. Muscle tissues were found to contain a number of muscle fibres with abnormal structure. Peripherally located structures such as a cap lacking in ATP-ase and fast myosin activity, rich in desmin, tropomyosin and alpha-actinin consisted of abnormally arranged myofibrils. The position of the peripherally situated myofibrils, as well as their abnormal sarcomere pattern, seems to point to an error in fusion and muscle protein synthesis. Whether our cases of congenital myopathy with cap structures are of hereditary origin or of a sporadic type remains unknown, so far. It seems that the result of our study, as well as data presented in the literature, allows us to divide cap disease into two forms: fatal and nonfatal. The morphological changes in the muscle fibres are identical in all the presented cases but the number of muscle fibres with cap structures is much higher in the fatal form. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.