Michela Luciano, PhD,  Science Writer—

Late-onset Pompe disease (LOPD), a rare, inherited muscle disorder, was finally diagnosed in a 52-year-old man in Austria after decades of misdiagnosis, a case study shows. The condition had long been hidden by overlapping symptoms of dermatomyositis, an autoimmune disorder. Only after treatment for the autoimmune disease failed to…

The buildup of the complex sugar glycogen, the main cause of muscle damage in late-onset Pompe disease (LOPD), can be detected in people with the condition long before visible symptoms appear, researchers in Denmark found. Using an advanced imaging technique capable of measuring glycogen inside muscles —a test that…

A simple, noninvasive breathing intervention that briefly exposes the body to repeated bouts of low oxygen modestly improved breathing in a mouse model of Pompe disease, a study showed. Therapeutic acute intermittent hypoxia (tAIH) led to small but measurable increases in breathing rate, breath size, or the amount of…

Using Nexviazyme (avalglucosidase alfa) led to sustained improvements in lung function, walking ability, and other motor skills over nearly three years of treatment in people with late-onset Pompe disease (LOPD), according to newly shared results from a global clinical trial. LOPD patients who switched to Nexviazyme after one…

Estimates of the number people diagnosed with Pompe disease vary widely across regions, with notably higher rates in populations of African descent, a study review found. The researchers attributed the variability to underlying genetic differences as well as inconsistencies in diagnostic criteria, newborn screening methods, and disease classification depending…