BACKGROUND: Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 1A (CMT1A) is the most common inherited neuropathy, a debilitating disease without known cure. Among patients with CMT1A, disease manifestation, progression and severity are strikingly variable, which poses major challenges for the development of new therapies. Hence, there is a strong need for sensitive outcome measures such as disease and progression biomarkers, which would add powerful tools to monitor therapeutic effects in CMT1A. METHODS: We established a pan-European and American consortium comprising nine clinical centres including 311 patients with CMT1A in total. From all patients, the CMT neuropathy score and secondary outcome measures were obtained and a skin biopsy collected. In order to assess and validate disease severity and progression biomarkers, we performed qPCR on a set of 16 animal model-derived potential biomarkers in skin biopsy mRNA extracts. RESULTS: In 266 patients with CMT1A, a cluster of eight cutaneous transcripts differentiates disease severity with a sensitivity and specificity of 90% and 76.1%, respectively. In an additional cohort of 45 patients with CMT1A, from whom a second skin biopsy was taken after 2-3 years, the cutaneous mRNA expression of GSTT2, CTSA, PPARG, CDA, ENPP1 and NRG1-Iis changing over time and correlates with disease progression. CONCLUSIONS: In summary, we provide evidence that cutaneous transcripts in patients with CMT1A serve as disease severity and progression biomarkers and, if implemented into clinical trials, they could markedly accelerate the development of a therapy for CMT1A.

• MeSH
• biopsie MeSH
• Charcotova-Marieova-Toothova nemoc krev   genetika   terapie   MeSH
• dospělí MeSH
• fosfodiesterasy genetika   MeSH
• genetická transkripce genetika   MeSH
• genetické markery genetika   MeSH
• glutathiontransferasa genetika   MeSH
• glykoproteiny genetika   MeSH
• kathepsin A genetika   MeSH
• kůže patologie   MeSH
• kvantitativní polymerázová řetězová reakce MeSH
• lidé středního věku MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• messenger RNA genetika   MeSH
• neuregulin-1 genetika   MeSH
• PPAR gama genetika   MeSH
• prognóza MeSH
• progrese nemoci * MeSH
• pyrofosfatasy genetika   MeSH
• senioři MeSH
• výsledek terapie * MeSH
• Check Tag
• dospělí MeSH
• lidé středního věku MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mužské pohlaví MeSH
• senioři MeSH
• ženské pohlaví MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH