Clinical, pathological and molecular genetic studies on a pedigree with late-onset Pompe's disease complicated with cerebral vascular diseases / 中华神经科杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To report a pedigree with late-onset Pompe' s disease complicated with cerebral vascular diseases as to summarize their clinical,pathological and molecular genetic characteristics.Methods We investigated the clinical and pathological data of the two affected siblings with late-onset Pompe' s disease complicated with cerebral vascular diseases.All the 5 members of this pedigree accepted the GAA gene analysis.ResultsBoth affected siblings had progressive pelvic girdle muscle weakness from young adult age,and recently developed vertigo and ataxia.Brain imaging of them revealed multiple cerebral hemorrhage,infarction and diffuse ischemic white matter lesions.The brother had multiple aneurysms and stenoses of cerebral arteries revealed by brain CTA.However,his sister was only found to have multi-beaded stenoses of cerebral arteries.The muscle pathology of the brother showed typical vacuolar degeneration and glycogen storage in muscle fibers. The GAA enzyme activity of 2 siblings were dramatically lower than normal.A heterozygous 19 bp-deletion (c.1388-c.1406,exon 9) were found in GAA gene in the 2 siblings and their healthy mother. Conclusions Cerebrovascular involvement should be a special phenotype of Pompe' s disease.A novel heterozygous mutation c.1388del19 in GAA gene was found in this pedigree,but the relationship between the mutation and the rare clinical phenotype needs further study.