m. wickland has received funding for travel and speaker honoraria from chi st luke 's health , muscular dystrophy association , mount nittany medical center , nationwide children 's research institute , georgia regents university , university of california  irvine , athena diagnostics , jain foundation , the american academy of neurology , children 's hospital of philadelphia , vanderbilt university ; has served on speaker 's bureaus for sanofi - genzyme ; has received research support from eli lilly , sarepta , sanofi - genzyme , nih , and national institute of neurological disorders and stroke .
the limb - girdle muscular dystrophies ( lgmds ) encompass a collection of genetic muscle diseases with proximal - predominant weakness of the limbs . 
 thirty - two of these disorders are named via the common nomenclature , including 8 autosomal - dominant ( lgmd1a - h ) and 24 autosomal - recessive ( lgmd2a - x ) disorders.1 in addition , numerous other genetic muscle diseases , including bethlem myopathy , dystrophinopathies , ryanodine receptor  associated myopathies , and many more , may clinically present with similar proximal - predominant weakness.2 therefore , current genetic testing panels targeting neuromuscular weakness frequently encompass > 75 genes . 
 these disorders are quite rare , each with minimum prevalence estimates of 0.010.60 cases per 100,000 persons.3 lgmd2a ( attributable to mutations in the gene for calpain-3 ) and lgmd2b ( attributable to mutations in the gene for dysferlin ) consistently are the 2 most prevalent lgmd subtypes in a variety of ethnic cohorts .