Fasciculation
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Clinic
- Also known as muscle twitch
- It is a Peripheral Nervous system Entity
- is a spontaneous, involuntary muscle contraction and relaxation, involving fine muscle fibers.
- Fasciculations arise as a result of spontaneous depolarization of a lower motor neuron leading to the synchronous contraction of all the skeletal muscle fibers within a single motor unit.
Causes
- Up to 70% of all healthy people, though for most, it is quite infrequent.
- Risk factors are age, stress, fatigue, and strenuous exercise.
- Fasciculations can be caused by anxiety, caffeine or alcohol and thyroid disease.
- Magnesium deficiency is a common cause
- Drug-induced Fasciculations
Related disease
- Tics must also be distinguished from fasciculations. Small twitches of the upper or lower eyelid, for example, are not tics, because they do not involve a whole muscle, rather are twitches of a few muscle fibre bundles, that are not suppressible.
- Myokymia: Fasciculation is intermittent bursts of contraction and is seen as a single muscle twitch at a time. It can change location within the muscle or can recur in the same area at some intervals, but not rhythmic. Myokymia is somewhat few rhythmic and slower contractions in muscles at the same place.