Novel genotypes and phenotypes among Chinese patients with Floating-Harbor syndrome

Shujie Zhang†,
Shaoke Chen†,
Haisong Qin,
Haiming Yuan,
Yalei Pi,
Yu Yang,
Hui Huang,
Guimei Li,
Yan Sun,
Zhihua Wang,
Huamei Ma,
Xiaoling Fu,
Ting Zhou,
Jian Wang,
Huifeng ZhangEmail author and
Yiping ShenEmail author View ORCID ID profile

†Contributed equally

Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases201914:144

https://doi.org/10.1186/s13023-019-1111-8

Received: 19 February 2019
Accepted: 4 June 2019
Published: 14 June 2019

Abstract

Background

Floating-Harbor syndrome (FHS) is a rare syndromic short stature disorder caused by truncating variants in SRCAP. Few Chinese FHS patients had been reported so far and limited knowledge regarding the benefit of growth hormone treatment existed.

Methods

We ascertained 12 short stature patients with molecularly confirmed diagnosis of FHS by whole exome sequencing. We performed a comprehensive clinical evaluation for all patients and assessed the responsiveness of growth hormone treatment in a subset of the patients.

Results

Five distinct pathogenic/likely pathogenic variants were identified in 12 independent FHS patients including two previously reported variants (c.7303C > T/p.Arg2435Ter and c.7330C > T/p.Arg2444Ter) and three novel variants (c.7189G > T/p.Glu2397Ter, c.7245_7246delAT/p.Ser2416ArgfsTer26 and c.7466C > G/p.Ser2489Ter). The c.7303C > T/p.Arg2435Ter mutation appears more common in Chinese FHS patients. The clinical presentations of Chinese FHS patients are very similar to those of previously reported patients of different ethnicities. Yet we noticed micropenis and ear abnormalities in multiple patients, suggesting that these may be novel phenotypes of Floating-Harbor syndrome. Eight patients (one with GH deficiency, one with undetermined GH level, six without GH deficiency) underwent growth hormone treatment, 3 patients had good responses, one with modest and two with poor responses.

Conclusion

We described novel genotypes and phenotypes in a Chinese FHS patient cohort. We showed that about half of FHS patients exhibited modest to good response to GH treatment regardless of their respective GH deficiency status. We didn’t find any correlation between different mutations and response to GH treatment.