A rare recessive distal hereditary motor neuropathy with HSJ1 chaperone mutation.

Objective: Distal hereditary motor neuropathies (dHMN) form a clinically and genetically heterogeneous group of disorders, characterized by muscle weakness and atrophy predominating at the distal part of the limbs, due to the progressive degeneration of motor neurons in the spinal cord. We report here a novel rare variant of dHMN with autosomal recessive inheritance in a large Jewish family originating from Morocco. The disease is characterized by a predominance of paralysis at the lower limbs and an early adulthood onset.