Genotype-phenotype correlations of dyshormonogenetic goiter in children and adolescents from South India.

BACKGROUND: Dyshormonogenetic goiter is one of the most common causes of hypothyroidism in children and adolescents in iodine nonendemic areas. The exact genotype-phenotypic correlations (GPCs) and risk categorization of hypothyroid phenotypes of dyshormonogenetic mutations are largely speculative. The genetic studies in pediatric dyshormonogenesis are very sparse from Indian sub-continent. In this context, we analyzed the implications of TPO, NIS , and DUOX2 gene mutations in hypothyroid children with dyshormonogenetic hypothyroidism (DH) from South India.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is interdisciplinary prospective study, we employed eight sets of primers and screened for 142 known single nucleotide polymorphisms in TPO , NIS , and DUOX2 genes. The subjects were children and adolescents with hypothyroidism due to dyshormonogenetic goiter. Congenital hypothyroidism, iodine deficiency, and Hashimoto's thyroiditis cases were excluded.

RESULTS: We detected nine mutations in 8/22 (36%) children. All the mutations were observed in the intronic regions of NIS gene and none in TPO or DUOX2 genes. Except for bi-allelic, synonymous polymorphism of TPO gene in child number 14, all other mutations were heterozygous in nature. GPCs show that our mutations significantly expressed the phenotypic traits such as overt hypothyroidism, goiter, and existence of family history. Other phenotypic characters such as sex predilection, the age of onset and transitory nature of hypothyroidism were not significantly affected by these mutations.

CONCLUSION: NIS gene mutations alone appears to be most prevalent mutations in DH among South Indian children and these mutations significantly influenced phenotypic expressions such as severity of hypothyroidism, goiter rates, and familial clustering.