Hypotonia is a serious medical condition that is almost always found as early as infancy. Diagnosing hypotonia is usually relatively easy; what tends to be difficult for doctors is finding out what is causing the hypotonia. Despite the setbacks that hypotonia guarantees to a person's life, treatment and therapy can help hypotonic patients to adjust to their disability.

Characteristics

Hypotonia is essentially abnormally decreased muscle tone. Those who suffer from hypotonia are often described as feeling and appearing as though they are "rag dolls" and are unable to bend their ligaments while they are able to extend them beyond normal lengths. Often the movement of the head is uncontrollable; not in the sense of spasmatic movement, but chronic ataxia. Hypotonic patients fail to develop basic motor skills, posture control, and movement skills. Due to the looseness of a hypotonic patient's body, special care and attention must be given.

Tests for Diagnosing Hypotonia

Diagnosing a patient includes obtaining family medical history and a physical examination, and may include such additional tests as computerized tomography (CT) scans, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, electroencephalogram (EEG), blood tests, chromosome karyotyping, spinal taps, electromyography muscle tests, or muscle and nerve biopsy.

Causes of Hypotonia

• central nervous system dysfunction
• genetic disorders (the most common cause)
• muscle disorders

Conditions known to cause Hypotonia

• Down's syndrome
• Guillian-Barre syndrome
• myasthenia gravis
• poliomyelitis
• Prader-Willi syndrome
• kernicterus
• meningitis
• congential cerebellar ataxia
• encephalitis
• Werdnig-Hoffman disease
• myotonic dystrophy
• infant botulism
• familial dysautonomia (Riley-Day syndrome)
• Marfan's syndrome
• muscular dystrophy
• achondroplasia
• trisomy 13
• sepsis
• Aicardi syndrome
• Canavan disease
• congenital hypothyroidism
• hypervitaminosis D
• Krabbe disease
• Menkes syndrome
• metachromatic leukodystrophy
• methylmalonic acidemia
• rickets
• spinal muscular atrophy type 1
• Tay-Sachs disease
• abnormal vaccine reaction

External links

• Overview
• Additional Source