Two novel mutant alleles of the gene encoding neurotrophic tyrosine kinase receptor type 1 (NTRK1) in a patient with congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis: a splice junction mutation in intron 5 and cluster of four mutations in exon 15.

Congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA), also called hereditary sensory and autonomic neuropathy type IV (HSAN IV), is caused by mutations of the NTRK1 gene coding for the neurotrophic tyrosine kinase receptor type 1. We report the results of the NTRK1 sequence analysis in a CIPA family from Poland. We found that the patient was in a state of compound heterozygosity. He had one mutant allele with a novel G>A substitution in the conserved splice junction donor site affecting the first base pair of intron 5 (IVS5+1G>A). In the other allele he had a cluster of four single nucleotide substitutions in exon 15: an 1876C>T change (relative to the transcription start site) and three G>T changes (1904G>T, 1909G>T and 1915G>T). All of these mutations change the sense of the codons: H598Y, G607V, E609X and V611L, respectively. Mutations E609X and V611L are novel and unique to the patient family and at least one of them, which creates a premature stop codon in position 609, should have a deleterious effect on the gene function. The other two substitutions H598Y and G607V are most likely rare polymorphisms, which are in linkage disequilibrium. They occur together with an estimated allele frequency of about 6%. Our report increases the spectrum of NTRK1 mutations in CIPA patients and describes an unusual case of a cluster of four mutations located close to each other in one exon.