The authors present their experience with non-radioactive diagnostics of Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy using short tandem repeat polymorphism from four intron loci (introns 44, 45, 49, 50) and two 5’terminus regions of the dystrophine gene. Regions with tandem repeats were amplified by the polymerase chain reaction and after separation in denaturing polyacrylamide gel identified by silver staining. The results presented show the reliability and simplicity of non-radioactive diagnostics, which could be introduced in every DNA-laboratory.

        Key words: Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy, silver staining, short tandem repeats