Causes

Causes of Spinal Muscular Atrophy

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a genetic disease, and you can only get it if you inherit the gene for it from both parents. SMA is the number one genetic cause of death for infants.

SMA is caused by a mutation in the survival motor neuron gene 1 (SMN1).

Other rare forms of SMA (non-chromosome 5) are caused by mutations in genes other than SMN1.