Three cases of isolated terminal deletion of chromosome 8p without heart defects presenting with a mild phenotype.

Individuals with isolated terminal deletions of 8p have been well described in the literature, however, molecular characterization, particularly by microarray, of the deletion in most instances is lacking. The phenotype of such individuals falls primarily into two categories: those with cardiac defects, and those without. The architecture of 8p has been demonstrated to contain two inversely oriented segmental duplications at 8p23.1, flanking the gene, GATA4. Haploinsufficiency of this gene has been implicated in cardiac defects seen in numerous individuals with terminal 8p deletion. Current microarray technologies allow for the precise elucidation of the size and gene content of the deleted region. We present three individuals with isolated terminal deletion of 8p distal to the segmental duplication telomeric to GATA4. These individuals present with a relatively mild and nonspecific phenotype including mildly dysmorphic features, developmental delay, speech delay, and early behavior issues.

Clinical comparison of overlapping deletions of 19p13.3.

We present three patients with overlapping interstitial deletions of 19p13.3 identified by high resolution SNP microarray analysis. All three had a similar phenotype characterized by intellectual disability or developmental delay, structural heart abnormalities, large head relative to height and weight or macrocephaly, and minor facial anomalies. Deletion sizes ranged from 792 Kb to 1.0 Mb and included a common region arr [hg19] 19p13.3 (3,814,392-4,136,989), containing eight genes: ZFR2, ATCAY, NMRK2, DAPK3, EEF2, PIAS4, ZBTB7A, MAP2K2, and two non-coding RNA's MIR637 and SNORDU37. The patient phenotypes were compared with three previous single patient reports with similar interstitial 19p13.3 deletions and six additional patients from the DECIPHER and ISCA databases to determine if a common haploinsufficient phenotype for the region can be established.