Abstract
Purpose: Congenital microcephaly (CM) is an important birth defect with long term neurological sequelae. We aimed to perform detailed phenotypic and genomic analysis of patients with Mendelian forms of CM. Methods: Clinical phenotyping, targeted or exome sequencing, and autozygome analysis. Results: We describe 150 patients (104 families) with 56 Mendelian forms of CM. Our data show little overlap with the genetic causes of postnatal microcephaly. We also show that a broad definition of primary microcephaly —as an autosomal recessive form of nonsyndromic CM with severe postnatal deceleration of occipitofrontal circumference—is highly sensitive but has a limited specificity. In addition, we expand the overlap between primary microcephaly and microcephalic primordial dwarfism both clinically (short stature in >52% of patients with primary microcephaly) and molecularly (e.g., we report the first instance of CEP135-related microcephalic primordial dwarfism). We expand the allelic and locus heterogeneity of CM by reporting 37 novel likely disease-causing variants in 27 disease genes, confirming the candidacy of ANKLE2,YARS, FRMD4A, and THG1L, and proposing the candidacy of BPTF, MAP1B, CCNH, and PPFIBP1. Conclusion: Our study refines the phenotype of CM, expands its genetics heterogeneity, and informs the workup of children born with this developmental brain defect.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 545-552 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Genetics in Medicine |
Volume | 21 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Mar 1 2019 |
Keywords
- CNTRL
- autozygome
- dwarfism
- primary microcephaly
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Genetics(clinical)