Muscle Biopsy: A Diagnostic Tool in Muscle Diseases

Muscle biopsy is an important and essential tool in the diagnosis and treatment of muscle disease. For several decades, histological staining of paraffin-embedded tissue was used in muscle pathology. In the past few decades, fresh-frozen enzyme histochemical techniques have become the standard for assessing muscle disease. They have been complemented by the use of electron microscopy to characterize ultrastructural changes. More recently, the discovery of certain muscle proteins and the development of antibodies made possible the combination of enzyme histochemical and immunohistochemical methods to better assess muscle changes. In this review, we discuss the roles of histochemistry, enzyme histochemistry, immunohistochemistry, and electron microscopy in the diagnosis of skeletal muscle pathology (The J Histotechnol 31:101, 2008).Submitted March 3, 2008; accepted with revisions May 24, 2008