JLE

Epileptic Disorders

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Two mutations in the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor subunit A4 (CHRNA4) in a family with autosomal dominant sleep-related hypermotor epilepsy Volume 22, numéro 1, February 2020

Illustrations


  • Figure 1
Auteurs
1 Department of Neurology with Institute of Translational Neurology, University Hospital Münster, Münster
2 CeGaT GmbH, Tübingen
3 Praxis für Humangenetik, Tübingen
4 Department of Neurology, Medical Park Bad Feilnbach, Bad Feilnbach, Germany
* Correspondence: Lisa Langenbruch Department of Neurology with Institute of Translational Neurology, University Hospital Münster, Albert-Schweitzer-Campus 1, Gebäude A1, 48149 Münster, Germany

Sleep-related hypermotor epilepsy, or nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy, as it was formerly called, is a focal epilepsy with mostly sleep-related seizures of hypermotor, tonic or dystonic semiology. Sleep-related hypermotor epilepsy may be attributed to a monogenetic cause with autosomal dominant inheritance. Mutations are described in different genes, including the genes for three subunits of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor. We present a family with members over four generations exhibiting sleep-related hypermotor epilepsy. Genetic testing was available for three members from three generations, and revealed two variants in the alpha-4 subunit of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (one of them being novel) which are likely to be disease-causing. As these mutations were identified in cis configuration (on the same allele), we do not know whether one of the variants alone or a combination of the two is responsible for the pathogenicity.