Affected individuals may have normal intellect or may have profound intellectual disability, may experience developmental delay, or may have severe behavioral problems. The peripheral nervous system connects the brain and spinal cord to sensory organs such as the eyes and to other organs, muscles, and tissues throughout the body. Pain and impaired motor function (ability to start and control muscle movement) may result from compressed nerves or nerve roots in the spinal cord or in the peripheral nervous system. Neurological complications may include damage to neurons (specialized nerve cells that send and receive signals throughout the body). These features can or may not be apparent at birth but progress as the storage of glycosaminoglycans affects bone, skeletal structure, connective tissues, and organs. The mucopolysaccharidoses share many clinical features but have varying degrees of severity. Parents who do not show disease symptoms but carry a disease gene.Parents who are closely related or part of a distinct ethnic or geographically clustered community.In general, the following factors may increase the chance of having or passing on a genetic disease: In MPS ll, the mother alone passes along the defective gene to a son.) (The one exception is MPS II, or Hunter syndrome, which is an X-linked recessive disorder. Unaffected siblings and select relatives of a child with one of the mucopolysaccharidoses may carry one copy of the defective gene and could pass it on to their own children.

The parents and siblings of an affected child may have no sign of the disorder. When both parents have one copy of the defective gene, each pregnancy carries with it a one in four chance that the child will be affected. These are autosomal recessive disorders, meaning that only individuals inheriting the defective gene from both parents are affected. Individuals with mucolipidosis may share some of the clinical features associated with the mucopolysaccharidoses (certain facial features, bony structure abnormalities, and damage to the brain).Įstimates indicate that approximately one in every 25,000 babies born in the United States will have some form of the mucopolysaccharidoses. In this disorder, excessive amounts of fatty materials known as lipids (another principal component of living cells) are stored, in addition to smaller carbohydrates called sugars. The main function of lysosomes is to digest nonfunctional cell and other materials (including bacteria and cellular debris).Īnother lysosomal storage disease often confused with the mucopolysaccharidoses is mucolipidosis.

These are conditions in which large numbers of molecules that normally break down or degrade into smaller pieces in intracellular compartments called lysosomes accumulate in harmful amounts in the body's cells and tissues, particularly in the lysosomes. The mucopolysaccharidoses are classified within a larger group of disorders called lysosomal storage diseases. Symptoms may be similar or vary among the different types of the disorder. The result is permanent, progressive cellular damage that affects the individual's appearance, physical abilities, organ and system functioning, and, in most cases, mental development. Over time, these glycosaminoglycans collect in the cells, blood, brain and spinal cord, and connective tissues. People with a mucopolysaccharidosis disorder either do not produce enough of one of the 11 enzymes required to break down these sugar chains into proteins and simpler molecules or they produce enzymes that do not work properly. Glycosaminoglycans (formerly called mucopolysaccharides) are also found in the fluid that lubricates our joints. These cells help build bone, cartilage, tendons, corneas, skin, and connective tissue. The mucopolysaccharidoses are a group of inherited metabolic diseases caused by the absence or malfunctioning of certain enzymes the body needs to break down molecules called glycosaminoglycans-long chains of sugars (carbohydrates) in each of our cells. How are the mucopolysaccharidoses treated? How are the mucopolysaccharidoses diagnosed? What are the different types of the mucopolysaccharidoses?

Mps disease