Lumbar fascia Lumbar fascia The lumbar fascia is an anatomic structure of the lumbar region. It consists of a band or sheet of connective tissue fibres, primarily collagen, that attaches, stabilizes, encloses and separates muscles not limited to the lumbar region as the name suggests, but extending upwards over the thorax to the neck and downwards over the muscles covering the sacrum. The upper thoracic portion is thin while the lumbar and sacral regions are thicker and stronger. The lumbar fascia binds the deep muscles of the back to the spine and to the transverse processes of the vertebrae. Additionally the lumbar
Mixed connective tissue disease Mixed connective tissue disease Mixed connective tissue disease (also known as Sharp's syndrome), commonly abbreviated as MCTD, is an autoimmune disease characterized by the presence of high blood levels of a specific autoantibody, now called anti-U1 ribonucleoprotein (RNP). The idea behind the "mixed" disease is that this specific autoantibody is also present in other autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus, polymyositis, scleroderma, etc. It was characterized in 1972, and the term was introduced by Leroy in 1980. It is sometimes said to be the same as undifferentiated connective tissue disease, but other experts specifically reject this idea because undifferentiated