Special clinical pictures

Münchmeyer syndrome (Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva): An inherited genetic defect that affects the development of skeletal muscles leads to the so-called Münchmeyer syndrome. In this syndrome, lime salts are stored in muscle cells for years and as a result, the muscles become ossified. Starting in the neck area, the disease progresses from the top to the bottom, over the shoulder region into the arms and trunk.

Since there is currently no proven possibility for therapy, let alone cure, the final stage of the disease leads to ossification of the respiratory muscles and thus to difficult breathing, even death by suffocation.Since most patients remain childless and do not pass on their genes, the spread of Münchmeyer syndrome is very limited. Bornholm disease (epidemic pleurodynia): Epidemic pleurodynia is an inflammatory disease of the pleura, the chest and abdominal muscles. It is caused by an infection with Cocksackie B viruses, from the enterovirus family.

Symptoms are pain when breathing, slight fever and a reddened throat. The pain is caused by an infestation of the intercostal muscles, the muscles between the ribs, which are part of the respiratory musculature. Bornholm disease can be transmitted from person to person and is usually treated with analgesics according to the symptoms.

Myositis of the eye, also known as ocular myositis, is an idiopathic (i.e. without a known cause) inflammation of the eye muscles. It is one of the third most common diseases of the eye cavity and occurs immediately after ocular involvement in hyperthyroidism and lymphoproliferative diseases. The exact cause of myositis of the eye has not yet been fully clarified.

It is suspected to be an autoimmune reaction, i.e. an erroneous reaction of the body’s own defense system, which falsely recognizes and fights certain cellular structures as foreign. Most frequently affected are women in young adulthood (mean age of the disease: 34 years), whereby the symptoms are more often unilateral (only one eye affected) than bilateral: The eye muscle that is most frequently affected is the straight middle muscle (M. rectus medialis), which usually moves the eyeball towards the nose. Ocular myositis is usually diagnosed by CT, and treated by taking glucocorticoids (cortisone), so that the inflammation usually subsides within several days without consequences.

Protruding eyeball
Conjunctival swelling and inflammation
Eye movement-dependent pain
Eye movement restrictions and resulting visual disturbances (e.g. double images).

The term “Myositis ossificans” covers two medical conditions. One is heterotropic ossification, a disease in which ossifications occur in different parts of the body either spontaneously or after trauma and surgery. On the other hand, the term “myositis ossificans” also covers a rare hereditary disease – myositis ossificans progressive.

This is a congenital genetic defect that causes the body’s skeletal muscles to be converted in stages into bone tissue. Only about 600 people worldwide are affected by this genetic disease. The reason for the bony remodelling is the inability to repair defective skeletal muscles after banal injuries or traumas with healthy muscle tissue or even scar tissue – bone tissue is used instead. Over time, the muscular apparatus becomes increasingly inoperable, and the disease becomes life-threatening when organs are affected by the ossification of the muscles (e.g. respiratory dysfunction due to increasing ossification of the intercostal muscles and thus of the rib cage).