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Abstract
Objective: To identify patients with GFPT1-related limb-girdle myasthenia and analyze phenotypic consequences of the mutations.
Methods: We performed genetic analysis, histochemical, immunoblot, and ultrastructural studies and in vitro electrophysiologic analysis of neuromuscular transmission.
Results: We identified 16 recessive mutations in GFPT1 in 11 patients, of which 12 are novel. Ten patients had slowly progressive limb-girdle weakness responsive to cholinergic agonists with onset between infancy and age 19 years. One patient (no. 6) harbored a nonsense mutation and a second mutation that disrupts the muscle-specific GFPT1 exon. This patient never moved in utero, was apneic and arthrogrypotic at birth, and was bedfast, tube-fed, and barely responded to therapy at age 6 years. Histochemical studies in 9 of 11 patients showed tubular aggregates in 6 and rimmed vacuoles in 3. Microelectrode studies of intercostal muscle endplates in 5 patients indicated reduced synaptic response to acetylcholine in 3 and severely reduced quantal release in patient 6. Endplate acetylcholine receptor content was moderately reduced in only one patient. The synaptic contacts were small and single or grape-like, and quantitative electron microscopy revealed hypoplastic endplate regions. Numerous muscle fibers of patient 6 contained myriad dilated and degenerate vesicular profiles, autophagic vacuoles, and bizarre apoptotic nuclei. Glycoprotein expression in muscle was absent in patient 6 and reduced in 5 others.
Conclusions: GFPT1-myasthenia is more heterogeneous than previously reported. Different parameters of neuromuscular transmission are variably affected. When disruption of muscle-specific isoform determines the phenotype, this has devastating clinical, pathologic, and biochemical consequences.
GLOSSARY
- ACh=
- acetylcholine;
- AChE=
- acetylcholinesterase;
- AChR=
- acetylcholine receptor;
- CMS=
- congenital myasthenic syndrome;
- EP=
- endplate;
- GFPT1=
- glutamine-fructose-6-phosphate transaminase 1;
- MEPC=
- miniature endplate current;
- MEPP=
- miniature endplate potential;
- SR=
- sarcoplasmic reticulum
Footnotes
Go to Neurology.org for full disclosures. Funding information and disclosures deemed relevant by the authors, if any, are provided at the end of the article.
Supplemental data at www.neurology.org
- Received January 18, 2013.
- Accepted in final form April 8, 2013.
- © 2013 American Academy of Neurology
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