1. Pathogenic Huntingtin Repeat Expansions in Patients with Frontotemporal Dementia and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
- Author
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Ramita Dewan, Ruth Chia, Jinhui Ding, Richard Hickman, Thor Stein, Yevgeniya Abramzon, Sarah Ahmed, Marya S. Sabir, Makayla K. Portley, Arianna Tucci, Kristina Ibáñez, Pamela Keagle, Giacomina Rossi, Paola Caroppo, Fabrizio Tagliavini, Maria L. Waldo, Per M. Johansson, Christer F. Nilsson, The American Genome Center (TAGC), The FALS Sequencing Consortium, The Genomics England Research Consortium, The International ALS/FTD Genomics Consortium (iAFGC), The International FTD Genetics Consortium (IFGC), The International LBD Genomics Consortium (iLBDGC), The NYGC ALS Consortium, The PROSPECT Consortium, James Rowe, Luisa Benussi, Giuliano Binetti, Roberta Ghidoni, Edwin Jabbari, Coralie Viollet, Jonathan D. Glass, Andrew B. Singleton, Vincenzo Silani, Owen A. Ross, Mina Ryten, Ali Torkamani, Tanaka Toshiko, Luigi Ferrucci, Susan M. Resnick, Stuart Pickering-Brown, Christopher B. Brady, Neil Kowal, John A. Hardy, Vivianna Van Deerlin, Jean Paul Vonsattel, Matthew B. Harms, Huw R. Morris, Raffaele Ferrari, John E. Landers, Adriano Chiò, J. Raphael Gibbs, Clifton L. Dalgard, Sonja Scholz, and Bryan J. Traynor
- Subjects
congenital, hereditary, and neonatal diseases and abnormalities ,Pathology ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Huntingtin ,Lewy body ,business.industry ,medicine.disease ,nervous system diseases ,Pathogenesis ,Huntington's disease ,mental disorders ,medicine ,Etiology ,Dementia ,Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ,business ,Frontotemporal dementia - Abstract
To examine the role of repeat expansions in the pathogenesis of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), we performed repeat sizing of ten genetic loci previously implicated in neurodegenerative diseases. We examined whole-genome sequence data from 2,442 FTD/ALS patients, 2,599 Lewy body dementia (LBD) patients, and 3,158 neurologically healthy subjects. Pathogenic expansions (range: 40 to 64 CAG repeats) in the huntingtin (HTT) gene were found in three (0.12%) patients diagnosed with pure FTD/ALS syndromes but were not present in the LBD or healthy cohorts. We replicated our findings in an independent cohort, and identified five (0.14%) out of 3,674 FTD/ALS patients harboring pathogenic HTT CAG expansions. Postmortem evaluations of two patients revealed huntingtin-positive, as well as TDP43- and ubiquitin-positive aggregates, predominantly in the frontal cortex, without neostriatal atrophy. Our findings reveal an etiological relationship between HTT repeat expansions and FTD/ALS syndromes, and indicate that genetic screening of FTD/ALS patients for HTT repeat expansions should be considered.
- Published
- 2020
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