Idiopathic renal hypouricemia is a hereditary disease characterized by abnormally high renal uric acid clearance. Most patients are clinically silent, but acute renal failure (ARF), urolithiasis, or hematuria may develop. A defect in the SLC22A12 gene, which encodes the renal uric acid transporter, URAT1, is the known major cause of this disorder. We performed a mutational analysis of the SLC22A12 gene in five Korean patients with idiopathic renal hypouricemia in this study. Two patients presented with microscopic hematuria, one with uric acid urolithiasis, and one with exercise-induced ARF. One patient was asymptomatic. Three different mutations, W258X, R90H and R477H, were detected in four of the patients. However, no mutation was found in the fifth ARF patient. This is the first study of SLC22A12 mutations in a country other than Japan. W258X was found to be the predominant SLC22A12 mutation in Korean renal hypouricemia patients, as has been reported in Japan.

Recently, a urate transporter, hURAT1 (human uric acid transporter 1) encoded by SLC22A12, was isolated from the human kidney. hURAT1 is presumed to play the central role in reabsorption of urate from glomerular filtrate. In the present study, we analyzed SLC22A12 in seven unrelated Japanese patients with renal hypouricemia whose serum level of urate was less than 1.0 mg/dl, and their family members. We performed direct DNA sequencing of the exon and exon-intron boundaries of SLC22A12 using genomic DNA. Six of the seven patients (86%) possess mutations in SLC22A12. In five patients, a homozygous G to A transition at nucleotide 774 within exon 4 of SLC22A12, which forms a stop codon (TGA) at codon 258 (TGG), was identified (W258X). In one patient, the C to T transition within exon 3, which changes threonine at codon 217 to methionine (T217 M), and the W258X mutation were found (compound heterozygote). Thus, among 12 mutational alleles in six patients, 11 were the W258 X mutation (92%). Family members with the heterozygous W258X mutation (carriers) show relatively low levels of serum urate. The present study demonstrates that homozygous W258X mutation is the predominant genetic cause of idiopathic renal hypouricemia in Japanese patients.

Dent disease is an X-linked disorder characterized by low-molecular-weight (LMW) proteinuria, hypercalciuria, nephrocalcinosis, urolithiasis and renal dysfunction. Dent disease is caused by mutations in at least two genes, i.e. CLCN5 and OCRL1, and its genetic background and phenotypes are common among European countries and the USA. However, only few studies on Dent disease in Japan, which was originally called 'low-molecular-weight proteinuric disease', have been reported thus far. In this study, we analysed genetic background and clinical phenotype and laboratory data of 86 unrelated Japanese Dent disease patients. The results demonstrated that the genetic basis of Japanese Dent disease was nearly identical to those of Dent disease in other countries. Of 86 unrelated Japanese Dent patients, 61 possessed mutations in CLCN5 (Dent-1), of which 27 were novel mutations; 11 showed mutations in OCRL1 (Dent-2), six of which were novel, and the remaining 14 patients showed no mutations in CLCN5 or OCRL1 (Dent-NI). Despite the similarity in genetic background, hypercalciuria was detected in only 51%, rickets in 2% and nephrocalcinosis in 35%. Although the patients were relatively young, six patients (8%) showed apparent renal dysfunction. Japanese Dent disease has a wider clinical spectrum than Dent disease in Europe and the USA.

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