Kathy is a fifteen-year-old soccer player at a nearby high school. She arrived in the *
ER at 6:07 p.m. She was experiencing extreme muscle weakness and loss of
muscle coordination, particularly in her arms and legs! She told the doctors that
for the past few days, she had been extra tired with little energy to do anything.
The doctors decided to do some blood work which showed one particular
abnormality. Kathy's glucose levels were rather high although she was an athlete
and did mention she usually ate carbohydrates the night before a game. However,
this explanation could be dismissed since she did not have a game in the past
week. The doctors agreed that something else must be going on to cause such
high glucose levels (i.e. something was not breaking down these sugar
molecules). The doctors ordered for a muscle biopsy to be performed. The
doctors viewed the tissue sample under the microscope, and saw that the muscle
fibers were ragged red which contained mild accumulations of glycogen and
decreased activity for the enzyme cytochrome oxidase. (AKS 1b1)