Mutations in the gene coding for Sequestosome 1 (SQSTM1) have been genetically associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Paget disease of bone. In the present study, we analyzed the SQSTM1 coding sequence for mutations in an extended cohort of 1,808 patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), ascertained within the European Early-Onset Dementia consortium. As control dataset, we sequenced 1,625 European control individuals and analyzed whole-exome sequence data of 2,274 German individuals (total n = 3,899). Association of rare SQSTM1 mutations was calculated in a meta-analysis of 4,332 FTLD and 10,240 control alleles. We identified 25 coding variants in FTLD patients of which 10 have not been described. Fifteen mutations were absent in the control individuals (carrier frequency <0.00026) whilst the others were rare in both patients and control individuals. When pooling all variants with a minor allele frequency <0.01, an overall frequency of 3.2 % was calculated in patients. Rare variant association analysis between patients and controls showed no difference over the whole protein, but suggested that rare mutations clustering in the UBA domain of SQSTM1 may influence disease susceptibility by doubling the risk for FTLD (RR = 2.18 [95 % CI 1.24-3.85]; corrected p value = 0.042). Detailed histopathology demonstrated that mutations in SQSTM1 associate with widespread neuronal and glial phospho-TDP-43 pathology. With this study, we provide further evidence for a putative role of rare mutations in SQSTM1 in the genetic etiology of FTLD and showed that, comparable to other FTLD/ALS genes, SQSTM1 mutations are associated with TDP-43 pathology.
- MeSH
- Adaptor Proteins, Signal Transducing * genetics MeSH
- Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis MeSH
- DNA-Binding Proteins genetics MeSH
- Adult MeSH
- Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration * genetics pathology MeSH
- Genetic Predisposition to Disease * genetics MeSH
- Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide * genetics MeSH
- Cohort Studies MeSH
- Middle Aged MeSH
- Humans MeSH
- Meta-Analysis as Topic MeSH
- International Cooperation MeSH
- DNA Mutational Analysis MeSH
- Sequestosome-1 Protein MeSH
- Aged, 80 and over MeSH
- Aged MeSH
- Animals MeSH
- Check Tag
- Adult MeSH
- Middle Aged MeSH
- Humans MeSH
- Male MeSH
- Aged, 80 and over MeSH
- Aged MeSH
- Female MeSH
- Animals MeSH
We assessed the geographical distribution of C9orf72 G(4) C(2) expansions in a pan-European frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) cohort (n = 1,205), ascertained by the European Early-Onset Dementia (EOD) consortium. Next, we performed a meta-analysis of our data and that of other European studies, together 2,668 patients from 15 Western European countries. The frequency of the C9orf72 expansions in Western Europe was 9.98% in overall FTLD, with 18.52% in familial, and 6.26% in sporadic FTLD patients. Outliers were Finland and Sweden with overall frequencies of respectively 29.33% and 20.73%, but also Spain with 25.49%. In contrast, prevalence in Germany was limited to 4.82%. In addition, we studied the role of intermediate repeats (7-24 repeat units), which are strongly correlated with the risk haplotype, on disease and C9orf72 expression. In vitro reporter gene expression studies demonstrated significantly decreased transcriptional activity of C9orf72 with increasing number of normal repeat units, indicating that intermediate repeats might act as predisposing alleles and in favor of the loss-of-function disease mechanism. Further, we observed a significantly increased frequency of short indels in the GC-rich low complexity sequence adjacent to the G(4) C(2) repeat in C9orf72 expansion carriers (P < 0.001) with the most common indel creating one long contiguous imperfect G(4) C(2) repeat, which is likely more prone to replication slippage and pathological expansion.
- MeSH
- Alleles MeSH
- Alzheimer Disease genetics MeSH
- Genome-Wide Association Study methods MeSH
- Adult MeSH
- DNA Repeat Expansion MeSH
- Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration * epidemiology genetics MeSH
- Haplotypes MeSH
- Cohort Studies MeSH
- Middle Aged MeSH
- Humans MeSH
- Chromosomes, Human, Pair 9 genetics MeSH
- Molecular Sequence Data MeSH
- Genomic Instability * MeSH
- Prevalence MeSH
- C9orf72 Protein MeSH
- Proteins * genetics MeSH
- Base Sequence MeSH
- Aged, 80 and over MeSH
- Aged MeSH
- Age of Onset MeSH
- Check Tag
- Adult MeSH
- Middle Aged MeSH
- Humans MeSH
- Aged, 80 and over MeSH
- Aged MeSH
- Geographicals
- Europe MeSH
- Finland MeSH
- Germany MeSH
- Spain MeSH
- Sweden MeSH
- MeSH
- Diagnostic Errors prevention & control MeSH
- Child MeSH
- Calpain genetics MeSH
- Muscular Diseases genetics MeSH
- Check Tag
- Child MeSH
- Publication type
- Congress MeSH