When a maternal heterozygous mutation of the CYP24A1 gene leads to infantile hypercalcemia through a maternal uniparental disomy of chromosome 20.

BACKGROUND

Infantile hypercalcemia is an autosomal recessive disorder caused either by mutations in the CYP24A1 gene (20q13.2) or in the SLC34A1 gene (5q35.3). This disease is characterized by hypercalcemia, hypercalciuria and nephrocalcinosis in paediatric patients. Maternal uniparental disomy of chromosome 20 [UPD(20)mat], resulting in aberrant expression of imprinted transcripts at the GNAS locus, is a poorly characterized condition. UPD(20)mat patients manifest a phenotype similar to that of Silver-Russell syndrome and small for gestational age-short stature.

CASE PRESENTATION

We report here the genetic and clinical characterization of a male child with a phenotype of infantile hypercalcemia, postnatal growth retardation, and minor dysmorphic features. Genetic analysis using a next generation sequencing panel revealed a homozygous pathogenic variant of CYP24A1. The absence of the variant in the father led to microsatellite segregation analysis, suggestive of UPD. SNP-array revealed a large terminal copy neutral loss of heterozygosity leading to CYP24A1 homozygosity. SNP-array data of parent-child trio confirmed a UPD(20)mat responsible for both infantile hypercalcemia and Silver-Russell syndrome-like traits.

CONCLUSION

This is the first report of uniparental disomy of chromosome 20 revealed by infantile hypercalcemia related to CYP24A1 biallelic homozygous variants, underlying the importance of controlling allelic segregation in cases of homozygosity.