Mito What?

What is Mitochondrial Disease?

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Mitochondrial disease or dysfunction is an energy production problem. Almost all cells in the body have mitochondria, which are tiny “power plants” that produce a body’s essential energy.

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Mitochondrial disease means the power plants in cells don’t function properly. When that happens, some functions in the body don’t work normally. It’s as if the body has a power failure: there is a gradation of effects, like a ‘brown out’ or a ‘black out’.

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Scientifically, it is actually a category or group of diseases. That’s why mitochondrial disease takes many different forms and no two people may look alike.

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It can look like any number of better known diseases: Autism , Parkinson’s , Alzheimer’s , Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS),muscular dystrophy, and chronic fatigue syndrome. Staying with the power plant analogy, power plants provide energy to a large community with each part of the community requiring varying degrees of power; in the same way, mitochondria provide energy to various organs of the body. So, when there is a mitochondrial dysfunction, a “black out” looks like Leigh’s Disease, severe and fatal, while a “brown out” might be severe, but not lethal.

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 Every 15 minutes, a child is born who will develop mitochondrial disease by age 10. We now know that this group of diseases is approaching the frequency of childhood cancers