Rita Horvath, Reza Maroofian, Juliane S Müller, Yavuz Oktay, Mahmut Aslan, Ashwati Nair, Uluç Yiş, Emily O'Heir, Elmasnur Yilmaz, Ana Töpf, Henry Houlden, Steven Laurie, Bilge Özgör, Sergi Beltran, Pinar Edem, K. Polavarapu, Fei Gao, Serdal Güngör, Nur Arslan, Andreas Roos, Hanns Lochmüller, Leslie Matalonga, Katherine Schon, Alysia Kern Lovgren, Angela Lochmüller, Patrick F. Chinnery, Nóra Zs Szabó, Denisa Hathazi, Ida Paramonov, Aliz Rieger, Ahmet Yaramis, Ece Sonmezler, Semra Hız Kurul, Ipek Kalafatcilar, Burcu Ekinci, Houlden, Henry [0000-0002-2866-7777], Chinnery, Patrick F [0000-0002-7065-6617], Horvath, Rita [0000-0002-9841-170X], and Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository
Consanguineous marriages have a prevalence rate of 24% in Turkey. These carry an increased risk of autosomal recessive genetic conditions, leading to severe disability or premature death, with a significant health and economic burden. A definitive molecular diagnosis could not be achieved in these children previously, as infrastructures and access to sophisticated diagnostic options were limited. We studied the cause of neurogenetic disease in 246 children from 190 consanguineous families, recruited in three Turkish hospitals between 2016 and 2020. All patients underwent deep phenotyping and trio whole exome sequencing, and data were integrated in advanced international bioinformatics platforms. We detected causative variants in 119 known disease genes in 72% of families. Due to overlapping phenotypes 52% of the confirmed genetic diagnoses would have been missed on targeted diagnostic gene panels. Likely pathogenic variants in 27 novel genes in 14% of the families increased the diagnostic yield to 86%. Eighty-two% of causative variants (141/172) were homozygous, 11 of which were detected in genes previously only associated with autosomal dominant inheritance. Eight families carried two pathogenic variants in different disease genes. De novo (9.3%), X-linked recessive (5.2%) and compound heterozygous (3.5%) variants were less frequent compared to non-consanguineous populations. This cohort provided a unique opportunity to better understand the genetic characteristics of neurogenetic diseases in a consanguineous population. Contrary to what may be expected, causative variants were often not on the longest run of homozygosity and the diagnostic yield was lower in families with the highest degree of consanguinity, due to the high number of homozygous variants in these patients. Pathway analysis highlighted that protein synthesis/degradation defects and metabolic diseases are the most common pathways underlying paediatric neurogenetic disease. In our cohort 164 families (86%) received a diagnosis, enabling prevention of transmission and targeted treatments in 24 patients (10%). We generated an important body of genomic data with lasting impacts on the health and wellbeing of consanguineous families, and economic benefit for the healthcare system in Turkey and elsewhere. We demonstrate that an untargeted next generation sequencing approach is far superior to a more targeted gene panel approach, and can be performed without specialised bioinformatics knowledge by clinicians using established pipelines in populations with high rates of consanguinity. The project is supported by TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) Project No. 216S771. YO is supported by the Turkish Academy of Sciences’ Young Investigator award, TÜBA-GEBİP (2017). PFC is a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow (212219/Z/18/Z), and a UK NIHR Senior Investigator, who receives support from the Medical Research Council Mitochondrial Biology Unit (MC_UU_00015/9), the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2018-408), an MRC research grant (MR/S035699/1), an Alzheimer's Society Project Grant (AS-PG-18b-022). This research was supported by the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre (BRC-1215-20014). RH was supported by the European Research Council [309548], the Wellcome Investigator Award [109915/Z/15/Z]. the Medical Research Council (UK) [MR/N025431/1]; the Wellcome Trust Pathfinder Scheme [201064/Z/16/Z], the Newton Fund [UK/Turkey, MR/N027302/1], the Lily Foundation and the Evelyn Trust. HL receives support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Foundation Grant FDN-167281), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Muscular Dystrophy Canada (Network Catalyst Grant for NMD4C), the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI-JELF 38412), and the Canada Research Chairs program (Canada Research Chair in Neuromuscular Genomics and Health, 950-232279). Sequencing and analysis were provided by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard Center for Mendelian Genomics (Broad CMG) and was funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute, the National Eye Institute, and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute grant UM1 HG008900 and in part by National Human Genome Research Institute grant R01 HG009141. Data was analysed using the RD-Connect Genome-Phenome Analysis platform developed under FP7/2007-2013 funded project (grant agreement nº 305444) and funding from EJP-RD and INB/ELIXIR-ES. The study was further supported by the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program via grant 779257 “Solve-RD” (RH, SB, AT and HL). RH, PFC and YO were supported by an MRC strategic award to establish an International Centre for Genomic Medicine in Neuromuscular Diseases (ICGNMD) MR/S005021/1