Leukodystrophies comprises of many diseases. All such diseases in the leukodystrophies are inherited disorder i.e it passes from parent to child. There are different gene defects in all leukodystrophy which all lead to poor development in the myelin sheath It is an inherited disease. It has two forms mainly. These two forms of disease has different pattern of inheritance.One dorm is X- linked and in this patient manifests symptom in very early age of life i.e in childhood. Another form of disease called as Adrenomyeloneuropathy, which mainly affects the spinal cord and disease manifests the symptoms in adulthood with no cerebral damage. The incidence of X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy is at least 1 in 42,000 male births.

Myelin sheath is formed in white matter of brain. This white matter contains myelinated neurons. Myelination of the myelinated neurons is done with myelin sheath. Myelination helps in increased conduction rate of the impulses and hence provides faster conduction called salutatory conduction. In this disease there is degradation of myelin sheath and hence patients will have slow rate of response. Along with this myelin sheath defect there is also a defect in the gene which codes for a transporter protein which is coded by a gene ABCD1.The transporter protein helps in the transport of long chain fatty acids into the
peroxisomes which is essential for the formation of an enzyme to break the long chain of fatty acid into short chains. But due to the defect of this gene there is no breaking of the long chain and hence this long chain fatty acids gets accumulated in the brain and adrenal gland causes their malfunctioning. This disorder is mainly X- linked disorder which is carry forwarded to males only but on out of five women who carry gene can develop some symptoms.