Clinical, biochemical and genetic spectrum of 70 patients with ACAD9 deficiency: is riboflavin supplementation effective?

BACKGROUND: Mitochondrial acyl-CoA dehydrogenase family member 9 (ACAD9) is essential for the assembly of mitochondrial respiratory chain complex I. Disease causing biallelic variants in ACAD9 have been reported in individuals presenting with lactic acidosis and cardiomyopathy. RESULTS: We describe the genetic, clinical and biochemical findings in a cohort of 70 patients, of whom 29 previously unpublished. We found 34 known and 18 previously unreported variants in ACAD9. No patients harbored biallelic loss of function mutations, indicating that this combination is unlikely to be compatible with life. Causal pathogenic variants were distributed throughout the entire gene, and there was no obvious genotype-phenotype correlation. Most of the patients presented in the first year of life. For this subgroup the survival was poor (50% not surviving the first 2 years) comparing to patients with a later presentation (more than 90% surviving 10 years). The most common clinical findings were cardiomyopathy (85%), muscular weakness (75%) and exercise intolerance (72%). Interestingly, severe intellectual deficits were only reported in one patient and severe developmental delays in four patients. More than 70% of the patients were able to perform the same activities of daily living when compared to peers. CONCLUSIONS: Our data show that riboflavin treatment improves complex I activity in the majority of patient-derived fibroblasts tested. This effect was also reported for most of the treated patients and is mirrored in the survival data. In the patient group with disease-onset below 1 year of age, we observed a statistically-significant better survival for patients treated with riboflavin.

Genetic diagnosis of Mendelian disorders via RNA sequencing.

Across a variety of Mendelian disorders, ∼50-75% of patients do not receive a genetic diagnosis by exome sequencing indicating disease-causing variants in non-coding regions. Although genome sequencing in principle reveals all genetic variants, their sizeable number and poorer annotation make prioritization challenging. Here, we demonstrate the power of transcriptome sequencing to molecularly diagnose 10% (5 of 48) of mitochondriopathy patients and identify candidate genes for the remainder. We find a median of one aberrantly expressed gene, five aberrant splicing events and six mono-allelically expressed rare variants in patient-derived fibroblasts and establish disease-causing roles for each kind. Private exons often arise from cryptic splice sites providing an important clue for variant prioritization. One such event is found in the complex I assembly factor TIMMDC1 establishing a novel disease-associated gene. In conclusion, our study expands the diagnostic tools for detecting non-exonic variants and provides examples of intronic loss-of-function variants with pathological relevance.

Assessing Mitochondrial Bioenergetics in Isolated Mitochondria from Various Mouse Tissues Using Seahorse XF96 Analyzer.

Working with isolated mitochondria is the gold standard approach to investigate the function of the electron transport chain in tissues, free from the influence of other cellular factors. In this chapter, we outline a detailed protocol to measure the rate of oxygen consumption (OCR) with the high-throughput analyzer Seahorse XF96. More importantly, this protocol wants to provide practical tips for handling many different samples at once, and take a real advantage of using a high-throughput system. As a proof of concept, we have isolated mitochondria from brain, heart, liver, muscle, kidney, and lung of a wild-type mouse, and measured basal respiration (State II), ADP-stimulated respiration (State III), non-ADP-stimulated respiration (State IVo), and FCCP-stimulated respiration (State IIIu) using respiratory substrates specific to the respiratory chain complex I (RCCI) and complex II (RCCII). Mitochondrial purification and Seahorse runs were performed in less than eight working hours.

Characterization of a Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON) family harboring two primary LHON mutations m.11778G>A and m.14484T>C of the mitochondrial DNA.

Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON) is an inherited mitochondrial disease that usually leads to acute or subacute bilateral central vision loss. In 95% of cases, LHON is caused by one of three primary mutations of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), m.11778G>A in the MT-ND4 gene, m.14484T>C in the MT-ND6 gene, or m.3460G>A in the MT-ND1 gene. Here we characterize clinically, genetically, and biochemically a LHON family with multiple patients harboring two of these primary LHON mutations, m.11778G>A homoplasmic and m.14484T>C heteroplasmic. The unusually low male-to-female ratio of affected family members is also seen among the other patients previously reported with two primary LHON mutations m.11778G>A and m.14484T>C. While the index patient had very late onset of symptoms at 75years and severe visual loss, her two daughters had both onset in childhood (6 and 9years), with moderate to mild visual loss. A higher degree of heteroplasmy of the m.14484T>C mutation was found to correlate with an earlier age at onset in this family. Ours is the first LHON family harboring two primary LHON mutations where functional studies were performed in several affected family members. A more pronounced bioenergetic defect was found to correlate with an earlier age at onset. The patient with the earliest age at onset had a more significant complex I dysfunction than all controls, including the LHON patient with only the m.11778G>A mutation, suggesting a synergistic effect of the two primary LHON mutations in this patient.

Bezafibrate Improves Insulin Sensitivity and Metabolic Flexibility in STZ-Induced Diabetic Mice.

Bezafibrate (BEZ), a pan activator of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs), has been generally used to treat hyperlipidemia for decades. Clinical trials with type 2 diabetes patients indicated that BEZ also has beneficial effects on glucose metabolism, although the underlying mechanisms of these effects remain elusive. Even less is known about a potential role for BEZ in treating type 1 diabetes. Here we show that BEZ markedly improves hyperglycemia and glucose and insulin tolerance in mice with streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetes, an insulin-deficient mouse model of type 1 diabetes. BEZ treatment of STZ mice significantly suppressed the hepatic expression of genes that are annotated in inflammatory processes, whereas the expression of PPAR and insulin target gene transcripts was increased. Furthermore, BEZ-treated mice also exhibited improved metabolic flexibility as well as an enhanced mitochondrial mass and function in the liver. Finally, we show that the number of pancreatic islets and the area of insulin-positive cells tended to be higher in BEZ-treated mice. Our data suggest that BEZ may improve impaired glucose metabolism by augmenting hepatic mitochondrial performance, suppressing hepatic inflammatory pathways, and improving insulin sensitivity and metabolic flexibility. Thus, BEZ treatment might also be useful for patients with impaired glucose tolerance or diabetes.