Multiple epiphyseal dysplasia

Multiple epiphyseal dysplasia, abbreviated MED and also called Fairbank disease, is a rare genetic disorder that affects the growing ends of the bones. The dominant form is reported in about one in ten thousand births. Long bones normally lengthen as cartilage expands in the growth plate near each end, and that cartilage then mineralizes and hardens into bone in a process called ossification. In this condition the ossification process is defective, so the epiphyses, the rounded ends of the long bones, do not develop normally. The lead describes both a dominant form and the disorder as a whole as inherited, which places it among the genetic skeletal dysplasias.