Noncanonical splice-site variant in peripheral myelin protein 22 gene (PMP22) in a patient with hereditary neuropathy with liability to pressure palsies

AimHereditary neuropathy with liability to pressure palsies (HNPP) is a peripheral neuropathy with autosomal dominant inheritance. Diagnosis can be made from the characteristic abnormalities determined by nerve conduction studies (NCS), including subclinical deficits at physiological compression sites. Heterozygous deletion of the chromosome 17p11.2-p12 region including the peripheral myelin protein 22 gene (PMP22) is the cause in the majority of cases. However, the loss of function of PMP22 due to frameshift-causing insertion/deletion, missense, nonsense, or splice-site disrupting variants cause HNPP in some patients. We report a case of a patient diagnosed with HNPP on the basis of clinical features and the results of NCS. No deletions of PMP22 were detected by fluorescence in situ hybridization. MethodsWe performed direct nucleotide sequence analysis and identified a heterozygous variant, c.78 + 3G > T, in PMP22. Since this variant is located outside the canonical splice site at the exon 2-intron 2 junction, we investigated whether the variant causes aberrant splicing and leads to the skipping of exon 2 of PMP22 by in vitro minigene splicing assay. ResultsWe demonstrated that the c.78 + 3G > T variant causes the skipping of exon 2 and leads to loss of function of the mutant allele. ConclusionSearching for sequence variants located outside the canonical splice sites should also be considered even when deletion of PMP22 is not found in a patient with a clinical diagnosis suggesting HNPP.