Three Severe Cases of EBS Dowling-Meara Caused by Missense and Frameshift Mutations in the Keratin 14 Gene

We report three unrelated patients affected at birth with an unusually severe form of epidermolysis bullosa simplex Dowling-Meara type (EBS-DM) because of mutations in KRT14 encoding keratin 14. Two patients were heterozygous for the previously described p.M119T mutation. The third patient was heterozygous for a novel c.1246delC mutation predicting the replacement of the helix termination peptide and the tail domain by a 25 amino-acid aberrant carboxyterminal sequence. At age 2 years, patients carrying the p.M119T mutation still suffered from severe EBS-DM, whereas the patient harboring the c.1246delC mutation has improved over time. These cases illustrate genotype-phenotype correlations and have implications for genetic counselling of EBS.