No abstract

Heart involvement in patients with Friedreich ataxia (FRDA) is a condition marked by inevitable progressive deterioration, with premature death. There is currently no specific treatment for FRDA. Recently, a therapy with idebenone, a short-chain coenzyme Q10 analogue, was reported to reduce left ventricular mass by 20% in about half of FRDA patients, but a double-blind placebo-controlled study did not fully confirm these results. In this case report, we present a 5-year follow-up of symmetrical concentric hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) in an FRDA patient treated with high-dose propranolol. The therapy resulted in a reduction in the thickness of the septal and posterior left ventricular walls and complete normalization of diffuse electrocardiographic repolarization abnormalities. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first such case to be reported in the literature, demonstrating the positive effects of high-dose beta-blocker treatment on heart involvement in patients with FRDA.

No abstract

No abstract

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is the second most frequent autosomal recessive disease characterized by degeneration of the anterior horn cells of the spinal cord, leading to muscular atrophy. SMA is classified into three types according to disease severity and age-onset: severe (type I), intermediate (type II) and mild (type III). Deletions in the survival motor neuron (SMN) gene, located in the chromosome region 5q11.2-5q13.3, are major determinants of SMA phenotype. Extended deletions that include the neuronal apoptosis inhibitory protein (NAIP) gene may correlate with the severtity of SMA. SMN gene is present in two highly homologous copies, SMN1 and SMN2, but only deletions of the SMN1 gene (exons 7 and 8 or exon 7) are responsible for clinical manifestations of SMA. Here, we present the deletion profiling of SMN1 and NAIP genes in 89 children with SMA from Serbia: 52 patients with type I, 26 with type II, and 11 with type III. The homozygous deletion of the SMN1 gene was confirmed in 72 of 89 (81%) patients, being the most frequent in SMA type I (48/52): 68 patients (94.4%) with deletion of exons 7 and 8 and 4 patients (5.6%) with deletion of exon 7. The extended deletion including the NAIP gene was detected in 18 of 89 (20.2%) patients, mostly affected with type I. This study has revealed the lower incidence of deletions in the SMN1 and NAIP genes in families with SMA in Serbia and will provide important information for genetic counselling in these families.