Weakness of the hip girdle and upper thigh muscles, for instance in myopathies, leads to an instability of the pelvis on standing and walking. If the muscles extending the hip joint are affected, the posture in that joint becomes flexed and lumbar lordosis increases. The patients usually have difficulties standing up from a sitting position. Due to weakness in the gluteus medius muscle, the hip on the side of the swinging leg drops with each step (referred to as Trendelenburg sign). The gait appears waddling. The patients frequently attempt to counteract the dropping of the hip on the swinging side by bending the trunk towards the side which is in the stance phase (in the German language literature this is referred to as Duchenne sign). Similar gait patterns can be caused by orthopedic conditions when the origin and the insertion site of the gluteus medius muscle are closer to each other than normal, for instance due to a posttraumatic elevation of the trochanter or pseudarthrosis of the femoral neck.

Increased susceptibility to fatigue.

A type of Developmental delay characterized by a delay in acquiring motor skills.

Abnormally increased curvature (anterior concavity) of the lumbar or cervical spine.

Hypotonia is an abnormally low muscle tone (the amount of tension or resistance to movement in a muscle). Even when relaxed, muscles have a continuous and passive partial contraction which provides some resistance to passive stretching. Hypotonia thus manifests as diminished resistance to passive stretching. Hypotonia is not the same as muscle weakness, although the two conditions can co-exist.

The presence of an abnormal lateral curvature of the spine.

Sudden and involuntary contractions of one or more muscles.

A lack of strength of the proximal muscles.

Reduced strength of the musculature of the distal extremities.

The presence of skeletal muscular atrophy (which is also known as amyotrophy).

Fiber splitting or branching is a common finding in human and rat skeletal muscle pathology. Fiber splitting refers to longitudinal halving of the complete fiber, while branching originates from a regenerating end of a necrotic fiber as invaginations of the sarcolemma. In fiber branching, one end of the fiber remains intact as a single entity, while the other end has several branches.

An abnormality in which the nuclei of sarcomeres take on an abnormally central localization (or in which this feature is found in an increased proportion of muscle cells).

Muscle hypertrophy affecting the calf muscles.

An abnormally high degree of muscle fiber size variation. This phenotypic feature can be observed upon muscle biopsy.

The capability that a joint (or a group of joints) has to move, passively and/or actively, beyond normal limits along physiological axes.

Presence of abnormal vacuoles (membrane-bound organelles) in the sarcolemma. On histological staining with hematoxylin and eosin, rimmed vacuoles are popcorn-like clear vacuoles with a densely blue rim. The vacuoles are often associated with cytoplasmic and occasionally intranuclear eosinophilic inclusions.

An abnormal predominance of type I muscle fibers (in general, this feature can only be observed on muscle biopsy).

An increased volume of the endomysium, which is a connective tissue sheath that surrounds each muscule fiber. Together, bundles of muscle fibers form a fasciculus, surrounded by another layer of connective tissue called the perimysium.

An abnormal reduction on the vital capacity, which is defined as the total lung capacity (volume of air in the lungs at maximal inflation) less the residual volume (i.e., volume of air in the lungs following maximal exhalation) of the lung.