Muscle Deterioration

This is driving me nuts. I can’t think of the word that describes muscle deterioration for patients that are bed-ridden. Someone please help me think of this word.

Are you thinking of atrophy?

“You can be smart or pleasant. For years I was smart.
I recommend pleasant.”
Elwood P. Dowd

WAG: myasthenia gravis?

The term is atrophy.(We sometimes refer to it as de-conditioning)
Myasthenia gravis is a neuro-muscular transmitter deficiency disease.

“myasthenia gravis?” Wow, that was the disease that I worked on laboratory rats with at the Salk Institute. It does something similar but its not the answer.

I agree with atrophy as the term for muscle wasting caused by disuse.

It is NOT related to Myasthenia gravis, but since the condition was mentioned, I thought I’d provide this link: http://www.myasthenia.org/information/practical.htm

Sue from El Paso
Siamese Attack Puppet - Texas

Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.

I agree that “atrophy” is probably what you’re looking for. I post only as trivia master to add that the condition of extreme muscle growth found in weightlifters is called “hypertrophy”.

Thanks for the information. The word I was thinking of was atrophy, and I didn’t have a chance to check this all weekend.

Extreme muscle development, as APB9999 said, is hypertrophy. Hypertrophy of the forearm and fingers is called bowlingtrophy.

AskNott