Re-analysis of Next-generation Sequencing Data in Patients with Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy: Contribution of Spliceogenic MYBPC3 Variants in an Italian Cohort.

ABSTRACT

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a genetic cardiac muscle disease characterized by clinical and genetic heterogeneity. Genetic testing can reveal the presence of disease-causing variants in genes encoding sarcomere proteins. However, it yields inconclusive or negative results in 40-60% of HCM cases, owing to, among other causes, technical limitations such as the inability to detect pathogenic intronic variants. Therefore, we aimed to increase the diagnostic yield of molecular analysis for HCM by improving the in-silico detection of intronic variants in MYBPC3 that may escape detection by algorithms normally used with tagged diagnostic panels. We included 142 HCM probands with negative results in Illumina TruSight Cardio panel analysis, including exonic regions of 174 cardiomyopathy genes. Raw data were re-analyzed using existing bioinformatics tools. The spliceogenic variant c.1224-80G>A was detected in three patients (2.1%), leading us to reconsider their molecular diagnosis. These patients showed late onset and mild symptoms, although no peculiar phenotypic characteristics were shared. Collectively, rare spliceogenic MYBPC3 variants may play a role in causing HCM, and their systematic detection should be performed to provide more comprehensive solutions in genetic testing using multigenic panels.