https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(07)60439-5.pdf

Wilson's Disease

The copper metabolism disorder Wilson's disease was first defined in 1912. Wilson's disease can present with hepatic and neurological deficits, including dystonia and parkinsonism. Early-onset presentations in infancy and late-onset manifestations in adults older than 70 years of age are now well recognised. Direct genetic testing for ATP7B mutations are increasingly available to confirm the clinical diagnosis of Wilson's disease, and results from biochemical and genetic prevalence studies suggest that Wilson's disease might be much more common than previously estimated. Early diagnosis of Wilson's disease is crucial to ensure that patients can be started on adequate treatment, but uncertainty remains about the best possible choice of medication. Furthermore, Wilson's disease needs to be differentiated from other conditions that also present clinically with hepatolenticular degeneration or share biochemical abnormalities with Wilson's disease, such as reduced serum ceruloplasmin concentrations. Disordered copper metabolism is also associated with other neurological conditions, including a subtype of axonal neuropathy due to ATP7A mutations and the late-onset neurodegenerative disorders Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.

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Wilson's disease and other neurological copper disorders.

Interactions of iron, dopamine and neuromelanin pathways in brain aging and Parkinson's disease.

Despite a long history, Wilson's disease, an autosomal recessive disease caused by mutations in the ATP7B gene, remains a commonly misdiagnosed import disease. Mutations in ATP7B result in abnormal copper metabolism and subsequent toxic accumulation of copper. Clinical manifestations of neurologic Wilson's disease include variable combinations of dysarthria, dystonia, tremor, and choreoathetosis. Among neurodegenerative diseases, it is unusual in that misdiagnosis and delay in treatment are clinically relevant because treatments can prevent and cure Wilson's disease, if they are given appropriately. If left untreated, Wilson's disease progresses to hepatic failure or severe neurologic disability and death, while those adequately treated have normal life spans. This review focuses on the neurologic features of Wilson's disease, its diagnosis, and treatment options.

/pdf/neurologic-wilson-s-disease-2kocgufb0w.pdf

Neurologic Wilson's disease

Previous studies have failed to identify mutations in the Wilson's disease gene ATP7B in a significant number of clinically diagnosed cases. This has led to concerns about genetic heterogeneity for this condition but also suggested the presence of unusual mutational mechanisms. We now present our findings in 181 patients from the United Kingdom with clinically and biochemically confirmed Wilson's disease. A total of 116 different ATP7B mutations were detected, 32 of which are novel. The overall mutation detection frequency was 98%. The likelihood of mutations in genes other than ATP7B causing a Wilson's disease phenotype is therefore very low. We report the first cases with Wilson's disease due to segmental uniparental isodisomy as well as three patients with three ATP7B mutations and three families with Wilson's disease in two consecutive generations. We determined the genetic prevalence of Wilson's disease in the United Kingdom by sequencing the entire coding region and adjacent splice sites of ATP7B in 1000 control subjects. The frequency of all single nucleotide variants with in silico evidence of pathogenicity (Class 1 variant) was 0.056 or 0.040 if only those single nucleotide variants that had previously been reported as mutations in patients with Wilson's disease were included in the analysis (Class 2 variant). The frequency of heterozygote, putative or definite disease-associated ATP7B mutations was therefore considerably higher than the previously reported occurrence of 1:90 (or 0.011) for heterozygote ATP7B mutation carriers in the general population (P < 2.2 × 10(-16) for Class 1 variants or P < 5 × 10(-11) for Class 2 variants only). Subsequent exclusion of four Class 2 variants without additional in silico evidence of pathogenicity led to a further reduction of the mutation frequency to 0.024. Using this most conservative approach, the calculated frequency of individuals predicted to carry two mutant pathogenic ATP7B alleles is 1:7026 and thus still considerably higher than the typically reported prevalence of Wilson's disease of 1:30 000 (P = 0.00093). Our study provides strong evidence for monogenic inheritance of Wilson's disease. It also has major implications for ATP7B analysis in clinical practice, namely the need to consider unusual genetic mechanisms such as uniparental disomy or the possible presence of three ATP7B mutations. The marked discrepancy between the genetic prevalence and the number of clinically diagnosed cases of Wilson's disease may be due to both reduced penetrance of ATP7B mutations and failure to diagnose patients with this eminently treatable disorder.

/pdf/a-genetic-study-of-wilson-s-disease-in-the-united-kingdom-50wb1l3u89.pdf

S. Meenakshi-Sundaram

Papers

Wilson disease: description of 282 patients evaluated over 3 decades.