In this study, we investigated a 5-days old Chinese girl child who was presented with Classic ISOD. Karyotype and chromosomal microarray analysis identified no chromosomal abnormalities in the patient. WES identified a novel homozygous transition (c.1227G>A) in exon 6 of the SUOX gene in the proband. This novel homozygous variant leads to the formation of a truncated sulfite oxidase (p.Trp409*) of 408 amino acids instead of the wild type sulfite oxidase of 545 amino acids. Hence, it is a loss-of-function variants. The proband’s father and mother is carrying the variant in a heterozygous state. According to the variant interpretation guidelines of American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG), this variant is categorized as “likely pathogenic” variant.38
The incidence of SUOX gene associated ISOD is very rare in Chinese population and only seven reports have been published yet.6,21,24,27-30 Chan et al., reported a girl child presented with generalised tonicclonic convulsions, followed by opisthotonic posturing, generalised spasms with hypertonia, subsequent regression in development, recurrent convulsions, severe developmental delay, and difficulty in feeding.29 Genetic molecular analysis has not been done for the proband.
In 2002, Lee et al., reported a ten-month-old boy characterized by neonatal seizures with elevated level of both sulphite and S-sulphocysteine in the urine while the uric acid level was normal in the blood. The proband was identified with a nonsense (c.1029C>G, p.Tyr343*) mutation and a missense (c.479G>A, p.Arg160Gln) mutation.6
In 2012, Huang et al., investigated two patients with ISOD in Taiwan.21 The reported a female new born presented with high-pitched cry, tonic movements of four limbs, seizures without desaturation, decreased level of total homocysteine in plasma, diffuse cerebral atrophy and persistent edema in the left occipital, posterior temporal, and parietal lobes. The proband was identified with a homozygous substitution (c.1200C>G, p.Tyr400*) in SUOX gene.21
In 2017, Lee et al., reported a female new born clinically diagnosed with ISOD from Taiwan. The proband was manifested with difficulty in feeding and prolonged feeding time with poor sucking power. The proband was also presented with seizures with bicycling of legs, alternating myoclonic seizures with rhythmic jerking over limbs, and high-pitched irritable cry. Proband’s brain MRI showed ventricular dilatation, left frontal and temporal areas with cystic lesions, high T2 signal intensity of the bilateral cerebral cortex and globus pallidi. The proband was identified with normal level of bicarbonate, ammonia, plasma uric acid, amino acids, acylcarnitine, and urinary organic acids with absence of sufites in urine as well as a very low level of plasma cysteine. The proband was identified with a homozygous substitution (c.1200C>G, p.Tyr400*) in SUOX gene.24 Here, our patient was presented with intermittent tremor or seizures of limbs, neonatal encephalopathy, subarachnoid cyst and haemorrhage, dysplasia of corpus callosum, neonatal convulsion, respiratory failure, cardiac failure, hyperlactatemia, severe metabolic acidosis, hyperglycemia, hyperkalemia, moderate anemia, atrioventricular block and complete right bundle branch block.
In 2019, Tian et al., reported three siblings (two males and one female) characterized by abnormalities in the bilateral globus pallidus and substantia nigra with decreased level of plasma homocysteine. Genetic molecular studies identified two novel compound heterozygous (c.1096C>T, p.Arg366Cys and c.1376G>A, p.Arg459Gln) mutations in the SUOX gene.30
Recently, Du et al., two offspring identified with a heterozygous nonsense pathogenic variant (c.1200C>G, p.Y400*) and a heterozygous duplication (c.1549_1574dup, p.I525 Mfs*102) in the SUOX gene in the proband.27 Lastly, Zhao et al., reported a Chinese new born patient presented with homocysteine and uric acid in plasma, cysteine and total homocysteine in the blood and S-sulfocysteine was abnormally elevated in urine.28 The proband was manifested with progressive encephalopathy, tonic seizures, abnormal muscle tone, difficulties in feeding, progressive neuropathological findings, intermittent convulsions and axial dystonia.28 The proband was identified with heterozygous novel nonsense variant (c.475G>T, p.Glu159*) and a heterozygous missense variant (c.1201A>G, p.Lys401Glu) in the SUOX gene in the proband.28
Generally, ISOD is manifested with axial and peripheral hypotonia with movement abnormality, seizures, spasticity, microcephaly, intellectual deficit, difficulties in feeding, severe psychomotor retardation and ectopia lentis or dislocation of lens with an early infantile or neonatal age of onset. Axial and peripheral hypertonia are the most common phenotype among ISOD patients. Pharmaco-resistant seizures with abnormalities in muscle tone and movements were usually identified in most of the ISOD patients. Gradual and progressive difficulties in feeding was also found in many ISOD patients. According to neuropathological symptoms, it is impossible to distinguish between ISOD patients and the patients with severe perinatal asphyxia.40,41 Zaki et al., strongly recommended to include ISOD in the new-born differential clinical diagnosis with neonatal convulsion, seizures, abnormalities in movement and EEG test result.15 Previous studies showed that typical neuropathological (progressive changes in white matter, atrophy of cerebrum and cerebellum, cystic leukomalacia and ventriculomegaly) features of ISOD patients usually identified by neuroimaging (CT or MRI).42,43
Till date, no curative treatment has been developed for the patients with ISOD. In human, catabolism of cysteine is the major source of sulfite, so, late-onset ISOD patients with milder clinical symptoms usually recommended with low-methionine or low-cysteine diet.9,44,45 Previous study reported that two late-onset ISOD patients with mild clinical phenotype has been treated with low-methionine and low-cysteine diet and showed gradual progress in psychomotor development without neurological deterioration.44 However, ISOD patients with early or neonatal age of onset usually showed lethal outcome.14
Sulfite oxidase is a molybdenum dependent enzyme containing three domains (Figure 4). Pre-sulfite oxidase translocated from the cytosol to the outer mitochondrial membrane through the N-terminal ladder peptide which subsequently anchored on the inner mitochondrial membrane.46 Inner membrane peptidase (IMP) cleaved the N-terminal ladder peptide and the C-terminal fragment of sulfite oxidase has been released into the intermembrane space (IMS). Sulfite oxidase catalytically activated after binding with heme and molybdenum cofactor followed by homodimerization.42,46
Till now, only 32 germline variants of SUOX have been identified to be associated with ISOD. Among 32 reported variants, 20 variants are missense, 4 variants are nonsense, 6 variants are deletion which result into frameshift and one duplication.4,9-20,27,28 One deletion leads to loss of the wild type stop codon and followed by formation of a prolonged protein (Table 6).13
ISOD is a very rare and extremely heterogenous disorder in terms of both genotype and phenotype. However, due to extreme genotypic and phenotypic heterogeneity among patients with ISOD, identifying candidate gene and disease-causing mutation is a great challenge. Genetic screening of ISOD patients by performing next generation sequencing, either single gene sequencing or sequencing of a panel of genes are not always able to identify the candidate variants underlying the disease phenotype in ISOD patients. In order to overcome these disadvantages, whole exome sequencing, especially WES is the most significant and recent sequencing technologies for identifying the candidate gene and disease-causing variants in patients with ISOD. WES is the most sophisticated and advanced technique considering for identifying the candidate gene variants allowing clinicians for making timely and proper clinical diagnosis (Han et al., 2020; Dai et al., 2019; Ng et al., 2010; Zheng et al., 2018). In conclusion, our present study not only report the first variant of SUOX gene in a patient with ISOD in Chinese population, but also describe the importance and application of WES as a potential high throughput sequencing technology for molecular genetic analysis for the patients with ISOD.
In summary, here, we report a Chinese patient identified with extremely rare ISOD. Our present study expanded the mutation spectrum of SUOX gene associated with ISOD. Here, we also illustrated the significance of WES for identifying the candidate gene and disease-causing variants in patients with ISOD. This study also helped the clinicians for making proper clinical diagnosis of the ISOD patients with germline mutation in SUOX gene.