GIRLS AND MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY
Do girls ever get DMD or BMD? Yes, but rarely. A girl almost always has a working dystrophin gene on at least one of her two X chromosomes, and that's usually enough to protect her from skeletal muscle weakness.
Heart muscle weakness is another question, however. Female carriers of DMD or BMD can have heart problems even if they don't have skeletal muscle weakness, and some doctors recommend that female relatives of boys with DMD or BMD be checked for these at regular intervals.
Occasionally, for complicated genetic reasons, the working dystrophin gene isn't enough to compensate for the flawed one in a carrier, and she develops some generalized muscle weakness. In very rare instances, a girl can be born with no working dystrophin gene on either X chromosome, in which case she develops full-blown muscular dystrophy.
Usually, however, when a girl has muscular dystrophy, it's not the Duchenne or Becker type.
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