Clinical and Genetic Features of Korean Patients with Achromatopsia.

This multicenter study aimed to characterize Korean patients with achromatopsia. The patients' genotypes and phenotypes were retrospectively evaluated. Twenty-one patients (with a mean age at the baseline of 10.9 years) were enrolled and followed up for a mean of 7.3 years. A targeted gene panel or exome sequencing was performed. The pathogenic variants of the four genes and their frequencies were identified. and were equally the most prevalent genes: (N = 8, 38.1%), (N = 8, 38.1%), (N = 3, 14.3%), and (N = 2, 9.5%). The degree of functional and structural defects varied among the patients. The patients' age exhibited no significant correlation with structural defects. During the follow-up, the visual acuity and retinal thickness did not change significantly. In -achromatopsia patients, a proportion of patients with a normal foveal ellipsoid zone on the OCT was significantly higher than that of patients with other causative genes (62.5% vs. 16.7%; = 0.023). In -achromatopsia patients, the same proportion was significantly lower than that of patients with other causative genes (0% vs. 58.3%; = 0.003). Korean patients with achromatopsia showed similar clinical features but a higher prevalence of variants than those of other ethnic groups. The retinal phenotypes of the variants were more likely to be worse than those of other genes.