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New rare disease with own facial features, cardiac defects and developmental delay

May 19th, 2020
New rare disease with own facial features, cardiac defects and developmental delay
As part of the study, the authors shaped the profile of a robot portrait of the patients to help paediatricians identify the affected people. Credit: UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA-IBUB-IRSJD-CIBERER

An international multicentre study describes a rare disease characterized by a series of recognizable facial features, cardiac defects and intellectual disability, which they propose to name as TRAF7 syndrome, according to the name of the gene that causes this pathology.

The study, published in the journal Genetics in Medicine, is led by a team of the Faculty of Biology of the University of Barcelona and the Institute of Biomedicine of the University of Barcelona (IBUB), the Rare Diseases Networking Biomedical Research Centre (CIBERER) and the Research Institute Sant Joan de Déu (IRSJD), in collaboration with experts from the French Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM).

In this research, the experts identified 45 patients who were not diagnosed before with whom they could gain knowledge on this new syndrome, so far defined with only one previous article based on a study of seven people.

With the analysis of new patients, the authors described the clinical picture associated with the TRAF7 syndrome, featured by intellectual disability, motor delay, specific facial features, hearing loss, a congenital heart malformation—patent ductus arteriosus—and skeletal defects in the fingers, neck and chest.

Apart from defining the TRAF7 syndrome-associated phenotype spectrum, the authors of the new study analysed the transcriptome (the global expression analysis of all genes in a cell) of fibroblasts, the most common type of cell in the connective tissue, in several patients and controls. Therefore, it is possible to offer an explanation on the altered pathways in case the gene mutates and the disease originates.

Among other features that can contribute to identify the affected patients are blepharophimosis (eyelids are horizontally shortened), short neck with back deviations, pectus carinatum (malformation in the chest where the chest wall is held in outward position), and macrocephaly.

Finally, the team used a computer application based on photographs of several patients to create a synthetic profile of the syndrome which could be of interest for paediatricians who work with cases of this disease.

More information:
Phenotypic spectrum and transcriptomic profile associated with germline variants in TRAF7, Genetics in Medicine (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41436-020-0792-7

Provided by University of Barcelona

Citation: New rare disease with own facial features, cardiac defects and developmental delay (2020, May 19) retrieved 23 April 2024 from https://sciencex.com/wire-news/351349224/new-rare-disease-with-own-facial-features-cardiac-defects-and-de.html
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