Genetic variation of hexosaminidase A and arylsulfatase A activity. Correlation study in amnio-maternal pairs of cultured cells.

Pairs of cultured amniotic cells and maternal fibroblasts ("feto-maternal pairs") were studied for hexosaminidase A (HXA) and arylsulfatase A (ASA) activity. These lysosomal enzyme activities are genetically deficient in Tay-Sachs disease and metachromatic leukodystrophy, respectively. After HXA was standardized by relating it to hexosaminidase B (HXB) activity, a feto-maternal correlation coefficient of r = 0.51 (n = 32; 95% confidence limits 0.197-0.73) was found for the HXA/HXB activity quotients. This coefficient was near the 0.5 value theoretically valid for mother-child pairs, suggesting that the studied activities reflect essentially the genetic variability. The studies of ASA revealed a high variability of individual activities, which was reduced in two steps: (1) The ASA activity was related to the mean of two lysosomal reference enzyme activities, total hexosaminidase and acid beta-galactosidase. (2) Since the square root of ASA activity was found to follow more closely the variation of the reference activities, the square root of ASA activity over the mean reference activity was taken as a more standardized measure of ASA activity, and the quotient was treated statistically. Positive feto-maternal correlation of standardized ASA activity was obtained after the elimination of three pairs with extreme values. A correlation coefficient of 4 = 0.42 (n - 26; 95% confidence limits 0.039-0.695) resulted. The implications of these correlation studies for the problem of heterozygote identification by quantitative enzyme assays in families deficient in HXA and ASA activity were considered.