Hirayama’s disease: an Italian single center experience and review of the literature

Hirayama’s disease (HD), also known as “juvenile muscular atrophy of distal upper extremity” (JMADUE), was first described by Hirayama et al. in 1959 (1). Since then, the greatest number of cases have been reported from Japan and other Asian countries (1-6); in contrast, it is less common among the population of the North America and Europe, however lately some case series were published (7-10). Some case reports were reported in Italy (11-13) but to our knowledge this is the first reported Italian group of patients with HD