Coenzyme Q (CoQ) is a critical component of the mitochondrial respiratory chain. CoQ deficiencies often cause a variety of clinical syndromes, often involving encephalopathies. The heterogeneity of clinical manifestations implies different pathomechanisms, reflecting CoQ involvement in several biological processes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Spastic ataxias (SAs) encompass a group of rare and severe neurodegenerative diseases, characterized by an overlap between ataxia and spastic paraplegia clinical features. They have been associated with pathogenic variants in a number of genes, including GBA2. This gene codes for the non-lysososomal β-glucosylceramidase, which is involved in sphingolipid metabolism through its catalytic role in the degradation of glucosylceramide.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: The classification of germline variants may differ between labs and change over time. We apply a variant harmonization tool, Ask2Me VarHarmonizer, to map variants to ClinVar and identify discordant variant classifications in a large multipractice variant dataset.
Methods: A total of 7496 variants sequenced between 1996 and 2019 were collected from 11 clinical practices.
Allgrove syndrome (AS) is a rare disease with broad neurological involvement. Neurodegeneration can affect spinal motor neurons, Purkinje cells, striatal neurons and the autonomic system. The mechanisms that lead to neuronal loss are still unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF