Mosaic segmental uniparental isodisomy and progressive clonal selection: a common mechanism of late onset β-thalassemia major.

Genomic DNA of 3 patients, born as healthy carriers and developing a late-onset severe transfusion-dependent beta-thalassemia major was studied by high-density genome wide SNP array analysis. A mosaic loss of heterozygosity for almost the entire 11p was found, not attributable to deletions but involving mosaicism for segmental paternal isodisomy of 11p. Mitotic recombination leading to mosaic segmental uniparental isodisomy on chromosome 11p in multiple tissues has been described as a molecular disease mechanism for a subset of sporadic Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome cases. A similar mechanism also seems to be involved in causing late-onset disease in carriers of recessive mutations in other genes located in 11p, such as late-onset beta-thalassemia major and sickle cell disease. We suggest that the loss of maternally imprinted IGF-2 and H19 genes may account for the selective advantage of hematopoietic cells containing this segmental paternal isodisomy of 11p carrying the β-thalassemia mutation.