Publications by authors named "Mitrakos A"

Article Synopsis
  • * In a study involving 1,600 patients with neurodevelopmental disorders, 15 patients (0.9%) were found to have recurrent 16p11.2 rearrangements, including 13 deletions and two duplications, affecting different parts of the region.
  • * The clinical features and severity of symptoms in these patients showed significant variation, highlighting the need for better understanding and counseling for affected families.
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Nablus mask-like facial syndrome (NMLFS) is a rare condition characterized by unique facial features, initially described in a 4-year-old boy from Nablus, Palestine. These features include expressionless facial appearance, tight facial skin, blepharophimosis, sparse eyebrows, and a flat nose. Genetic studies have identified a deletion of 8q22.

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Article Synopsis
  • Persistent hyperCKemia, a condition related to muscle dysfunction, is often linked to genetic mutations in muscle-related genes, particularly the dystrophin gene.
  • A study analyzed medical records of 1354 cases from 1996-2021, identifying 730 individuals with significant genetic alterations and estimating the incidence of dystrophinopathy at roughly 1 in 3800 live male births, predominantly among Greek and Albanian populations.
  • The findings reveal that around 50% of hyperCKemia cases are usually due to dystrophinopathies, emphasizing the importance of understanding genetic diversity for public health strategies and ethical considerations in treatment, especially for asymptomatic individuals.
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Chromosomal microarray analysis (CMA) is considered a first-tier test for patients with developmental disabilities and congenital anomalies and is also routinely applied in prenatal diagnosis. The current consensus size cut-off for reporting copy number variants (CNVs) in the prenatal setting ranges from 200 Kb to 400 Kb, with the intention of minimizing the impact of variants of uncertain significance (VUS). Very limited data are currently available on the application of higher resolution platforms prenatally.

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Whole-Exome Sequencing (WES) has proven valuable in the characterization of underlying genetic defects in most rare diseases (RDs). Copy Number Variants (CNVs) were initially thought to escape detection. Recent technological advances enabled CNV calling from WES data with the use of accurate and highly sensitive bioinformatic tools.

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Objectives: Genetics of epilepsy are highly heterogeneous and complex. Lesions detected involve genes encoding various types of channels, transcription factors, and other proteins implicated in numerous cellular processes, such as synaptogenesis. Consequently, a wide spectrum of clinical presentations and overlapping phenotypes hinders differential diagnosis and highlights the need for molecular investigations toward delineation of underlying mechanisms and final diagnosis.

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Purpose: To investigate whether preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy (PGT-A) improves the clinical outcome in patients with advanced maternal age (AMA), recurrent miscarriages (RM), and recurrent implantation failure (RIF).

Methods: Retrospective cohort study from a single IVF center and a single genetics laboratory. One hundred seventy-six patients undergoing PGT-A were assigned to three groups: an AMA group, an RM group, and a RIF group.

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Pathogenic variants underly O'Donnell-Luria-Rodan syndrome, a recently described neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by global developmental delay, variable degrees of intellectual disability, and subtle facial dysmorphism. Less common findings include autism, seizures, gastrointestinal (GI) problems, and abnormal head circumference. Occurrence of mostly truncating variants as well as the similar phenotype observed in individuals with deletions spanning suggest haploinsufficiency of this gene as a common mechanism for the disorder, while a gain-of-function or dominant-negative effect cannot be ruled out for some missense variants.

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Coffin-Siris Syndrome 4 is an autosomal dominant congenital malformation syndrome caused by heterozygous mutations in the gene with its main features being intellectual disability, developmental delay, behavioral abnormalities, and hypoplastic or absent fifth fingernails and fifth distal phalanges. Here, we report a young woman with developmental delay, moderate intellectual disability, and bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, referred for genetic testing. High-resolution chromosomal microarray analysis identified a 428-kb deletion in chromosome 19 which included the gene.

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Background/aim: To determine the incidence of X chromosome mosaicism in women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment and present preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy (PGT-A) outcome of this group.

Patients And Methods: A total of 1,058 women undergoing IVF and 154 women with no fertility problems were enrolled in the study. Karyotyping from peripheral blood lymphocytes was performed by conventional cytogenetics.

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Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) is a malignancy of the immature lymphoid cells mainly associated with numerical and structural chromosomal aberrations. The current standard for profiling the diverse genetic background comprises a combination of conventional karyotype and FISH analysis for the most common translocations, albeit with many limitations. Chromosomal Microarray Analysis (CMA) is a high throughput whole genome method that is gradually implemented in routine clinical practice, but not many studies have compared the two methods.

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A novel paracentric inversion of the long arm of chromosome 20 [inv(20)(q13.1q13.3)], detected by conventional karyotyping in a 14-year-old boy with mental retardation is described.

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The potential use of patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) in the study and treatment of hematological diseases requires the setup of efficient and safe protocols for hiPSC generation. We aimed to adopt a reprogramming method for large-scale production of integration-free patient-specific hiPSC-lines in our stem cell processing laboratory, which supports a pediatric hematopoietic stem cell transplant unit located at a tertiary care children's hospital. We describe our 5-year experience in generation of hiPSC-lines from human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (BM-MSCs) using synthetic mRNAs encoding reprogramming factors.

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X-linked myotubular myopathy (XLMTM) is a rare inherited neuromuscular disorder associated with mutations in the gene on the Xq28 region. We report a severely affected girl with XLMTM, caused by maternally inherited 661 kb Xq28 microduplication identified by chromosomal microarray analysis and confirmed also on DNA from muscle biopsy with a custom-designed X-chromosome-specific microarray. X-inactivation analysis revealed a skewed inactivation pattern on the proband's muscle biopsy.

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BackroundMicrocephaly can either be isolated or it may coexist with other neurological entities and/or multiple congenital anomalies, known as syndromic microcephaly. Although many syndromic cases can be classified based on the characteristic phenotype, some others remain uncertain and require further investigation. The present study describes the application of array-comparative genomic hybridization (array-CGH) as a diagnostic tool for the study of patients with clinically unknown syndromic microcephaly.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Antley-Bixler syndrome (ABS) is a rare condition linked to issues with the POR gene, leading to abnormalities like craniosynostosis and steroid hormone production disorders, primarily inherited in an autosomal recessive way.
  • - This study examines three sibling fetuses diagnosed with ABS following termination of pregnancies at different gestation stages, utilizing ultrasound and postmortem evaluations combined with genetic analyses.
  • - The findings identified a combination of mutations in the POR gene — a maternal missense mutation and a paternal deletion — contributing to the development of ABS, thus providing new insights into its early manifestations that were previously underreported.
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Chromosomal microarray analysis (CMA) is currently considered a first-tier diagnostic assay for the investigation of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), developmental delay and intellectual disability of unknown etiology. High-resolution arrays were utilized for the identification of copy number variations (CNVs) in 195 ASD patients of Greek origin (126 males, 69 females). CMA resulted in the detection of 65 CNVs, excluding the known polymorphic copy number polymorphisms also found in the Database of Genomic Variants, for 51/195 patients (26.

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