A polymorphic AT-repeat causes frequent allele dropout for an MME mutational hotspot exon

Objective The objective of this study was to identify new causes of Charcot–Marie–Tooth (CMT) disease in patients with autosomal‐recessive (AR) CMT. Methods To efficiently identify novel causative genes for AR‐CMT, we analyzed 303 unrelated Japanese patients with CMT using whole‐exome sequencing and extracted recessive variants/genes shared among multiple patients. We performed mutation screening of the newly identified membrane metalloendopeptidase (MME) gene in 354 additional patients with CMT. We clinically, genetically, pathologically, and radiologically examined 10 patients with the MME mutation. Results We identified recessive mutations in MME in 10 patients. The MME gene encodes neprilysin (NEP), which is well known to be one of the most prominent beta‐amyloid (Aβ)‐degrading enzymes. All patients had a similar phenotype consistent with late‐onset axonal neuropathy. They showed muscle weakness, atrophy, and sensory disturbance in the lower extremities. All the MME mutations could be loss‐of‐function mutations, and we confirmed a lack/decrease of NEP protein expression in a peripheral nerve. No patients showed symptoms of dementia, and 1 patient showed no excess Aβ in Pittsburgh compound‐B positron emission tomography imaging. Interpretation Our results indicate that loss‐of‐function MME mutations are the most frequent cause of adult‐onset AR‐CMT2 in Japan, and we propose that this new disease should be termed AR‐CMT2T. A loss‐of‐function MME mutation did not cause early‐onset Alzheimer's disease. Identifying the MME mutation responsible for AR‐CMT could improve the rate of molecular diagnosis and the understanding of the molecular mechanisms of CMT. Ann Neurol 2016;79:659–672

Axonal polyneuropathies are a frequent cause of progressive disability in the elderly. Common etiologies comprise diabetes mellitus, paraproteinaemia, and inflammatory disorders, but often the underlying causes remain elusive. Late-onset axonal Charcot-Marie-Tooth neuropathy (CMT2) is an autosomal-dominantly inherited condition that manifests in the second half of life and is genetically largely unexplained. We assumed age-dependent penetrance of mutations in a so far unknown gene causing late-onset CMT2. We screened 51 index case subjects with late-onset CMT2 for mutations by whole-exome (WES) and Sanger sequencing and subsequently queried WES repositories for further case subjects carrying mutations in the identified candidate gene. We studied nerve pathology and tissue levels and function of the abnormal protein in order to explore consequences of the mutations. Altogether, we observed heterozygous rare loss-of-function and missense mutations in MME encoding the metalloprotease neprilysin in 19 index case subjects diagnosed with axonal polyneuropathies or neurodegenerative conditions involving the peripheral nervous system. MME mutations segregated in an autosomal-dominant fashion with age-related incomplete penetrance and some affected individuals were isolated case subjects. We also found that MME mutations resulted in strongly decreased tissue availability of neprilysin and impaired enzymatic activity. Although neprilysin is known to degrade β-amyloid, we observed no increased amyloid deposition or increased incidence of dementia in individuals with MME mutations. Detection of MME mutations is expected to increase the diagnostic yield in late-onset polyneuropathies, and it will be tempting to explore whether substances that can elevate neprilysin activity could be a rational option for treatment.

Quality control is a complex issue for clinical molecular diagnostic applications. In the case of genotyping assays, artifacts such as allele dropout represent a risk of misdiagnosis for amplification-based methods. However, its frequency of occurrence in PCR-based diagnostic assays remains unknown. To maximize the likelihood of detecting allele dropout, our clinical genotyping PCR-based assays are designed with two independent assays for each allele (nonoverlapping primers on each DNA strand). To estimate the incidence of allelic dropout, we took advantage of the capacity of our clinical assays to detect such events. We retrospectively studied their occurrence in the initial PCR assay for 30,769 patient reports for mutations involved in four diseases produced over 8 years. Ninety-three allele dropout events were detected and all were solved before reporting. In addition, 42 cases of artifacts caused by amplification of an allele ultimately confirmed to not be part of the genotype (drop-in events) were detected and solved. These artifacts affected 1:227 genotypes, 94% of which were due to nonreproducible PCR failures rather than sequence variants interfering with the assay, suggesting that careful primer design cannot prevent most of these errors. This provides a quantitative estimate for clinical laboratories to take this phenomenon into account in quality management and to favor assay designs that can detect (and minimize) occurrence of these artifacts in routine clinical use.