[Value of muscular echography in the detection of carriers of progressive muscular dystrophy].

Progressive muscular dystrophy is an hereditary disease with a sex-linked recessive transmission. It is remarkable that in a 33% of the patients the disease is due to a spontaneous mutation. The great deal of methods described for the detection of carriers, reflects their poor reliability. The gemellus muscles of 11 women belonging to 3 different families with children affected by progressive muscular dystrophy were explored by means of ultrasounds. Comparison was made with healthy controls. Since our findings are in concordance with those of the literature, we recommend the use of muscular ultrasounds in the detection of Duchenne muscular dystrophy carriers, specially considering the accessibility, innocuousness and quickness of this method.