Brain Matters in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy: DMD Mutation Sites and Their Association with Neurological Comorbidities Through Isoform Impairment

TL;DR

This study explores how mutations in the DMD gene relate to brain-related issues in Duchenne/Becker muscular dystrophy patients.

Contribution

The study is the first to analyze Dp140 5′UTR variants in relation to neuropsychiatric phenotypes in DMD/BMD patients.

Findings

Patients with distal DMD mutations had higher prevalence of neuropsychiatric comorbidities.

Epilepsy and intellectual disability are strongly associated in this patient cohort.

Neuropsychiatric phenotypes varied greatly among patients with identical DMD gene variants.

Abstract

Background: Duchenne/Becker muscular dystrophy (DMD/BMD) is associated with a wide spectrum of brain-related comorbidities. Methods: This retrospective study assesses the neuropsychiatric profile of DMD/BMD patients and the hypothesis of a functional-versus-structural approach of dystrophin gene variants/impaired isoforms in relation to brain comorbidities. Patients with documented mutation in the DMD gene and neuropsychiatric assessments were included. Seven comorbidities were analyzed based on variant location and dystrophin brain isoform disruption. The clustering of comorbidities and genotype–phenotype correlations were studied. Results: 264 DMD/BMD patients met inclusion criteria. 22 variants have never been described before. A high prevalence of neuropsychiatric comorbidities was identified in the cohort with higher values in patients with distal mutations. The number of comorbidities increased with the number of brain dystrophin isoforms predicted to be lost. Functional-versus-structural comparison revealed that Dp140 5′UTR variants might not affect protein expression. Epilepsy and intellectual disability (ID) showed significant association in this cohort. Neuropsychiatric phenotype varied greatly in patients with identical variants, even between siblings. Conclusions: This is one of the largest European cohorts for which all these comorbidities were studied in association with DMD gene mutation site and the first study of this kind performed on the Eastern European DMD/BMD population. Our group analyzed, for the first time, Dp140 5′UTR variants in relation to all neuropsychiatric phenotypes and showed that epilepsy and ID are strongly associated in DMD/DMB patients.

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