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A large Japanese family with Machado–Joseph disease: clinical and genetic analysis
Author(s) -
Yoritaka A.,
NakagawaHattori Y.,
Hattori N.,
Kitahara A.,
Mizuno Y.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
acta neurologica scandinavica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.967
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1600-0404
pISSN - 0001-6314
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0404.1999.tb07354.x
Subject(s) - machado–joseph disease , hyporeflexia , age of onset , family history , parkinsonism , degenerative disease , medicine , cerebellar ataxia , ataxia , locus (genetics) , trinucleotide repeat expansion , disease , pediatrics , genetics , spinocerebellar ataxia , allele , biology , surgery , psychiatry , weakness , gene
We report clinical and genetic studies on a large Japanese family with Machado–Joseph disease (MJD), in which various different clinical phenotypes were seen in the same family, i.e., cerebellar ataxia type, severe amyotrophy type, and young‐onset parkinsonism type. In addition, patients with very mild symptoms (formes frustes) were encountered. The expansion of the CAG repeat at the MJD locus ranged from 64 to 71 in 7 affected and 4 presymptomatic individuals. In our family, no clear inverse correlation was noted between the length of CAG‐expansion and the age of onset, or the clinical phenotypes. Hyporeflexia was a common manifestation seen in 5 patients. It has been reported that the presence of peripheral neuropathy in MJD is associated with smaller increase in the CAG repeats; findings in our family conform with this observation.