Pathogenic Huntingtin Repeat Expansions in Patients with Frontotemporal Dementia and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.
Department
Neurobiology
Document Type
Article
Abstract
We examined the role of repeat expansions in the pathogenesis of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) by analyzing whole-genome sequence data from 2,442 FTD/ALS patients, 2,599 Lewy body dementia (LBD) patients, and 3,158 neurologically healthy subjects. Pathogenic expansions (range, 40-64 CAG repeats) in the huntingtin (HTT) gene were found in three (0.12%) patients diagnosed with pure FTD/ALS syndromes but were not present in the LBD or healthy cohorts. We replicated our findings in an independent collection of 3,674 FTD/ALS patients. Postmortem evaluations of two patients revealed the classical TDP-43 pathology of FTD/ALS, as well as huntingtin-positive, ubiquitin-positive aggregates in the frontal cortex. The neostriatal atrophy that pathologically defines Huntington's disease was absent in both cases. Our findings reveal an etiological relationship between HTT repeat expansions and FTD/ALS syndromes and indicate that genetic screening of FTD/ALS patients for HTT repeat expansions should be considered.
Publication Date
11-26-2020
Publication Title
Neuron
ISSN
1097-4199
PubMed ID
33242422
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
10.1016/j.neuron.2020.11.005
Recommended Citation
Dewan, Ramita; Chia, Ruth; Ding, Jinhui; Hickman, Richard A; Stein, Thor D; Abramzon, Yevgeniya; Ahmed, Sarah; Sabir, Marya S; Portley, Makayla K; Tucci, Arianna; Ibáñez, Kristina; Shankaracharya, F N U; Keagle, Pamela; Rossi, Giacomina; Caroppo, Paola; Tagliavini, Fabrizio; Waldo, Maria L; Johansson, Per M; Nilsson, Christer F; Rowe, James B; Benussi, Luisa; Binetti, Giuliano; Ghidoni, Roberta; Jabbari, Edwin; Viollet, Coralie; Glass, Jonathan D; Singleton, Andrew B; Silani, Vincenzo; Ross, Owen A; Ryten, Mina; Torkamani, Ali; Tanaka, Toshiko; Ferrucci, Luigi; Resnick, Susan M; Pickering-Brown, Stuart; Brady, Christopher B; Kowal, Neil; Hardy, John A; Van Deerlin, Vivianna; Vonsattel, Jean Paul; Harms, Matthew B; Morris, Huw R; Ferrari, Raffaele; Landers, John E; Chiò, Adriano; Gibbs, J Raphael; Dalgard, Clifton L; Scholz, Sonja W; Traynor, Bryan J; and Bowser, Robert, "Pathogenic Huntingtin Repeat Expansions in Patients with Frontotemporal Dementia and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis." (2020). Translational Neuroscience. 728.
https://scholar.barrowneuro.org/neurobiology/728