Hi,

This is my first time ever posting on web about the issue I've been having, and I'm not very experienced in writing so I hope you bear with this...

I have been suffering for past five years from a strange generalized muscle wasting, and I'm trying desperately to figure out what it could be...

Basically, I noticed it first time six years ago (at age of 27) in my arms, when my bicep muscles started to get "shorter". That is, the tendon length and flexibility remained same, but the muscles gradually started to get shorter, and "balloon up" on the arms. My right (dominant) side has progressed a bit more than the left side, with the bicep muscle resembling now more like a golf ball than the long, thin strip it was in the beginning. A few years ago my arms also started to fatigue more easily doing certain tasks such as washing/drying hair.

Recently, a few years ago, I noticed same thing starting to happen in my leg muscles, with first the quadriceps starting to get shorter and leave a "gap" between the muscle and knee. Now, half year ago, I started having minor trouble walking, with legs getting exhausted much easier, and at same time noticed that the hamstring muscles had also started to get shorter... first thing I noticed this from was the pain when sitting, which made me notice that the painful parts of legs were actually muscle tendons which no longer muscle all the way over them, causing the parts without muscle to cause pain when sitting. No sign of "foot drop" yet luckily.

I went to doctor about this problem soon after leg problems started, and some blood tests showed that I had slightly elevated antibodies in three tests for MG (anti-achr and anti-thymoma), but normal CK levels. The neurologist wanted to do further studies based on this, so I was sent to do CT-scan for thymoma was normal, and EMG which was normal (for both myogenic disorder and neuromuscular junction disorder test), so he concluded that MG could be ruled out.

So far not much other tests have been done (except B12 which was normal), but the issue has been progressively been getting worse... carrying light shopping bags for 10 minutes causes pain in arms where I've observed muscle loss, and hands have minor coordination problems after that making for example typing on keyboard difficult on the affected hand. The neurologist briefly mentioned something about increased reflexes in arms, and decreased reflexes in legs, but I'm still trying to work out with doctor's to see what other tests could be done to figure this out (muscle biopsy was mentioned as a possibility.)

For the past 5 years I have also had almost constantly on-off fasciculation "episodes", in the beginning in hands but later in other body parts, and in last half year there was a brief few months where there was large amount of fasciculations in legs (back thighs) too, after which I noticed the leg muscle loss. They seem to be semi-isolated, happening only at large muscles/muscle groups, and usually only when muscle is resting. There might be a few days when they don't appear, but on some days I got them multiple times. Recently they appear most often in the morning when I'm waking up in the both upper arms.

But back to my key question... I'm mostly curious about the muscle "ballooning/shortening" thing (the ends of muscles retreating and exposing tendons), has anyone ever experienced that, and what could be the possible cause for this? I tried to search for information about muscle wasting, but seems like always the muscle is supposed to get "thinner", but not "shorter" like it's happening for me.