Stephanie Kleinle, Veronika Scholz, Anna Benet-Pagès, Tobias Wohlfrom, Stefanie Gehling, Florentine Scharf, Simone Rost, Eva-Christina Prott, Susanne Grinzinger, Anna Hotter, Verena Haug, Sabine Niemeier, Lucia Wiethoff-Ubrig, Tim Hagenacker, Klaus Goldhahn, Arpad von Moers, Maggie C Walter, Peter Reilich, Katja Eggermann, Florian Kraft, Ingo Kurth, Hannes Erdmann, Elke Holinski-Feder, Teresa Neuhann, Angela Abicht
BACKGROUND: The importance of early diagnosis of 5q-Spinal muscular atrophy (5q-SMA) has heightened as early intervention can significantly improve clinical outcomes. In 96% of cases, 5q-SMA is caused by a homozygous deletion of SMN1. Around 4 % of patients carry a SMN1 deletion and a single-nucleotide variant (SNV) on the other allele. Traditionally, diagnosis is based on multiplex ligation probe amplification (MLPA) to detect homozygous or heterozygous exon 7 deletions in SMN1. Due to high homologies within the SMN1/SMN2 locus, sequence analysis to identify SNVs of the SMN1 gene is unreliable by standard Sanger or short-read next-generation sequencing (srNGS) methods...
July 5, 2023: Journal of Neuromuscular Diseases