Abstract
Hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) is a group of genetically heterogeneous neurodegenerative disorders characterized by slowly progressive spasticity and weakness of the lower limbs. HSP is caused by failure of development or selective degeneration of the corticospinal tracts, which contain the longest axons in humans. The most common form of HSP is caused by mutations of the spastin gene (SPAST), located on chromosome 2p21-p22, which encodes spastin, one of the ATPases associated with diverse cellular activities (AAA). In this study, we detected four causative mutations of SPAST among 14 unrelated patients with spastic paraplegia. Two missense mutations (1447A→G, 1207C→G) and two deletion mutations (1465delT, 1475-1476delAA) were located in the AAA cassette region. Three of these four mutations were novel. Previous reports and our results suggest that the frequency of SPAST mutations is higher among Japanese patients with autosomal dominant HSP, although SPAST mutations are also observed in patients with sporadic spastic paraplegia.
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Acknowledgments
We are very grateful to the present families for their willingness to participate in this study. This work was partly supported by a Grant-in-Aid for the Research Committee for Ataxic Diseases of the Research on Measures for Intractable Diseases from the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labour, Japan; by a Grant-in-Aid for the Research Committee for CNS Degenerative Diseases of the Research on Measures for Intractable Diseases from the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labour, Japan; by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture, Japan; by a grant from the Akiyama Foundation; and by a grant from the Noastic Foundation.
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Rehana Basri, Ichiro Yabe and Hiroyuki Soma have contributed equally to this work.
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Basri, R., Yabe, I., Soma, H. et al. Four mutations of the spastin gene in Japanese families with spastic paraplegia. J Hum Genet 51, 711–715 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10038-006-0412-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10038-006-0412-7
