Novel mutations of ABCC6 gene in Japanese patients with Angioid streaks

Angioid streaks (AS) are eye abnormalities caused by breaks in Bruch’s membrane. The condition is often associated with pseudoxanthoma elasticum (PXE). The ATP-binding cassette, sub-family C (CFTR/MRP), member 6 (ABCC6) is reported to be the causal gene for PXE, although there have been no reports on whether the ABCC6 gene is the causal gene for AS. The aims of this study are to isolate the causal mutations for AS using a haplotype-based case-control study. We genotyped 54 Japanese AS patients and 150 controls for 5 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). A simple association study using each SNP and a haplotype-based case-control study were performed. Twelve patients with special haplotypes for AS were selected, and were then subjected to gene sequencing. Six variants were successfully identified as causal mutations for AS (p.R419Q, p.E422K, c.2542delG, Del_Exon23, c.3774-3775insC and p.E1427K), and 4 of these were novel. This method can be applied to both identifying susceptibility variants of multifactorial diseases and isolating mutations in single-gene diseases.