Molecular and clinical studies in 8 patients with Temple syndrome.

Temple syndrome (TS14, #616222) is a rare imprinting disorder characterised by phenotypic features including pre- and postnatal growth retardation, muscular hypotonia and feeding difficulties in infancy, early puberty and short stature with small hands and feet and often truncal obesity. It is caused by maternal uniparental disomies, paternal deletions and primary imprinting defects that affect the chromosomal region 14q32 and lead to a disturbed expression of imprinted genes in this region. Here, we present detailed clinical data of 8 patients with Temple syndrome, 4 with an imprinting defect, 2 with an imprinting defect in a mosaic state as well as 1 complete and 1 segmental maternal uniparental disomy of chromosome 14.

[Muir-Torre syndrome with previously undescribed frameshift mutation in the MSH2 gene]. / Muir-Torre-Syndrom mit bisher nicht beschriebener Frameshift-Mutation im MSH2-Gen.

Muir-Torre syndrome (MTS) is a rare phenotypic variant of hereditary non-polyposis colorectal carcinoma (HNPCC, Lynch syndrome), in which patients, in addition to visceral carcinomas, develop skin tumors. Multiple keratoacanthomas and basal cell carcinomas with sebocytic differentiation are characteristic as well as multiple benign and malignant tumors of the sebaceous glands, such as sebaceous adenoma, sebaceous epithelioma (sebaceoma) and sebaceous carcinoma. Particularly Cystic tumors of the sebaceous glands are especially suggestive of MTS. In genetically predisposed persons, cutaneous and visceral tumors are diagnosed at an average age of 53 years. Here we present an interesting case of a 65-year-old man in whom molecular genetic tests revealed a novel mutation in the MSH2 gene, leading to a frame shift within the gene.

Detection of a significant association between mutations in the ACVRL1 gene and hepatic involvement in German patients with hereditary haemorrhagic telangiectasia.

Hereditary haemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT) is a heterogeneous multisystemic dysplasia of the vascular tissue. This autosomal dominant inherited disorder shows a wide variation in its phenotypic expression. Between 8 and 78% of the HHT patients show arteriovenous malformations of the liver. The molecular basis for hepatic manifestation is still unknown. Two genes are known to play a major role in the development of HHT: activin A receptor type II-like 1 gene (ACVRL1) and ENG. Previously, we and others showed that hepatic involvement is associated with mutations in the ACVRL1 gene, but rarely caused by ENG mutations. Here, we report about the sequencing analysis of a new cohort of 18 adult HHT patients. In these patients, we identified eight novel (four in ACVRL1 and four in ENG) and eight already known mutations. Statistical analysis of our entire data revealed significant differences in the distribution of ACVRL1 and ENG mutations among HHT patients with and without liver involvement (p = 0.0016). The positive predictive value for type 2 HHT (ACVRL1 positive) patients to develop liver disease until the age of 52 years is 68.4%. We conclude that molecular genetic testing of HHT patients is important for prognosis with respect to liver disease.