Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease via MLPA of PKD1

Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is a common inherited kidney disease with multisystem involvement. ADPKD is characterized by bilateral renal cysts accompanied by cysts in other organs including the liver, seminal vesicles, pancreas, and arachnoid membrane (Harris et al. 2011. PubMed ID: 20301424). Renal symptoms include hypertension, renal pain, and renal insufficiency. Nearly half of ADPKD patients have end-stage renal disease (ESRD) by age 60 years. The progressive growth of liver cysts is the most common extrarenal manifestation of ADPKD. The most important non-cystic manifestations of ADPKD are vascular and cardiac abnormalities including intracranial aneurysms, mitral valve prolapse, dilatation of the aortic root, dissection of the thoracic aorta, and abdominal wall hernias. The clinical spectrum of ADPKD is wide and substantial variability of disease severity can occur even within the same family.

Patients with ADPKD typically have onset of symptoms in adulthood. In some rare cases, however, patients with bi-allelic PKD1 variants may have clinical features similar to those of patients with autosomal recessive polycystic kidney disease (ARPKD) (caused by bi-allelic variants in the PKHD1 gene) (Rossetti et al. 2009. PubMed ID: 19165178; Vujic et al. 2010. PubMed ID: 20558538; Audrézet et al. 2016. PubMed ID: 26139440). In these rare cases, symptoms may appear in early childhood or even in utero.

PKD1 and PKD2 are the two major causative genes for ADPKD (Rossetti et al. 2007. PubMed ID: 17582161; Audrézet et al. 2012. PubMed ID: 22508176). Accounting for a small fraction of ADPKD cases, GANAB and DNAJB11 are newly implicated in ADPKD (Porath et al. 2016. PubMed ID: 27259053; Cornec-Le Gall et al. 2018. PubMed ID: 29706351).

PKD1 (46 coding exons) encodes a member of the polycystin protein family, which plays an important role in renal tubular development. Genetic defects of PKD1 account for approximately 85% of genetically positive ADPKD cases and have been found across the whole coding region of the gene (Rossetti et al. 2007. PubMed ID: 17582161; Audrézet et al. 2012. PubMed ID: 22508176). In addition to missense substitutions and small in-frame changes, truncating changes (nonsense, canonical splice variants and frame-shifting small deletion/insertions) are the majority of PKD1 defects. Gross deletions have been also reported, but are relatively rare (<4% of pathogenic variants) (Ariyurek et al. 2004. PubMed ID: 14695542; Rossetti et al. 2007. PubMed ID: 17582161; Audrézet et al. 2012. PubMed ID: 22508176). The majority of PKD1 defects were found in single patients (Audrézet et al. 2012. PubMed ID: 22508176). De novo pathogenic variants account for about 10% of individuals with ADPKD in adulthood (Neumann et al. 2012. PubMed ID: 22367170).

Large deletions in PKD1 are relatively rare (Ariyurek et al. 2004; Rossetti et al. 2007; Audre'zet et al. 2012).

As required, genomic DNA (gDNA) is extracted from the patient specimen. gDNA extracted from blood samples/submitted DNA from the patient is denatured and hybridized to MLPA probes specific to exonic or intronic regions of a particular gene(s). Each probe consists of two adjacent sequences that once hybridized to patient/reference DNA are ligated into a single probe. Fluorescently labeled PCR is then used to amplify each ligated probe using a common PCR primer set. The amplicon is then visualized during fragment separation using a capillary electrophoresis instrument. The relative peak height of each amplified probe from the patient’s sample is compared to four internal negative control results to determine relative copy number. For each patient sample the data for only the gene of interest is analyzed and reported.