ABSTRACT
Most alpha-mannosidosis patients described have been children and information on the natural course of the disorder has been based on a very limited number of observations. In order to assess the disease presentation in detail and to study disease characteristics, a study was started in 1991 and has been ongoing for over 20 years. Patients with confirmed alpha-mannosidosis were recruited through The International Society for Mannosidosis and Related Diseases (ISMRD) where families affected with alpha-mannosidosis received a questionnaire on general clinical information to be filled out by the responsible physician. The questionnaire was returned by 125 patients (64%). Of these, 45 patients were 15 years old or older at the time of evaluation. The questionnaire allowed us to assess the following features: Facial dysmorphism, columnar disease, arthritis, myopathy, hearing impairment, mental impairment, psychosis, bone disease and motor function as well as general health. This study describes the progression of alpha-mannosidosis and may be helpful in determining the clinical characteristics for assessments of prognosis.
Subject(s)
alpha-Mannosidosis/diagnosis , alpha-Mannosidosis/physiopathology , Adolescent , Adult , Child , Child, Preschool , Data Collection , Disease Progression , Facies , Hearing Loss/complications , Humans , Infant , Infant, Newborn , Mental Disorders/complications , Middle Aged , Muscular Diseases/complications , Prognosis , Psychotic Disorders/complications , Retrospective Studies , Surveys and Questionnaires , Time Factors , Treatment Outcome , Young AdultABSTRACT
The searchable mutant database tGRAP (previously called tinyGRAP) at the University of Tromsø contains data on mutated G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs). All data have been extracted from scientific papers and entered manually into the database. The current version of the tGRAP mutant database (tGRAP.uit.no, release 10, April 2001) contains around 10 500 mutants extracted from almost 1400 research papers containing mutant data on five families of GPCRs, i.e. Family A, rhodopsin-like; Family B, secretin-like; Family C, metabotropic glutamate-like; Family D, pheromone; Family E, cAMP receptors. A query form provides rapid and simple access to relevant mutant information. In addition to this query form, a tool that enables the user to access mutation data via sequence alignments has been introduced. The ability to access mutant data from such alignments increases the usefulness of the mutant database and facilitates comparison of mutagenesis data between receptors. Moreover, this tool allows the construction of tailor-made sequence alignment views from any combination of receptors belonging to the same class. The database is available at http://tGRAP.uit.no/.