Background
Bartter Syndrome is a rare, genetically heterogeneous, mainly autosomal recessively inherited condition characterized by hypochloremic hypokalemic metabolic alkalosis. Mutations in several genes encoding for ion channels localizing to the renal tubules including
SLC12A1, KCNJ1, BSND, CLCNKA, CLCNKB, MAGED2
and
CASR
have been identified as underlying molecular cause. No genetically defined cases have been described in the Iranian population to date. Like for other rare genetic disorders, implementation of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies has greatly facilitated genetic diagnostics and counseling over the last years. In this study, we describe the clinical, biochemical and genetic characteristics of patients from 15 Iranian families with a clinical diagnosis of Bartter Syndrome.
Results
Age range of patients included in this study was 3 months to 6 years and all patients showed hypokalemic metabolic alkalosis. 3 patients additionally displayed hypercalciuria, with evidence of nephrocalcinosis in one case. Screening by Whole Exome Sequencing (WES) and long range PCR revealed that 12/17 patients (70%) had a deletion of the entire
CLCNKB
gene that was previously identified as the most common cause of Bartter Syndrome in other populations. 4/17 individuals (approximately 25% of cases) were found to suffer in fact from pseudo-Bartter syndrome resulting from congenital chloride diarrhea due to a novel homozygous mutation in the
SLC26A3
gene, Pendred syndrome due to a known homozygous mutation in
SLC26A4
, Cystic Fibrosis (CF) due to a novel mutation in
CFTR
and apparent mineralocorticoid excess syndrome due to a novel homozygous loss of function mutation in
HSD11B2
gene. 1 case (5%) remained unsolved.
Conclusions
Our findings demonstrate deletion of
CLCNKB
is the most common cause of Bartter syndrome in Iranian patients and we show that age of onset of clinical symptoms as well as clinical features amongst those patients are variable. Further, using WES we were able to prove that nearly 1/4 patients in fact suffered from Pseudo-Bartter Syndrome, reversing the initial clinical diagnosis with important impact on the subsequent treatment and clinical follow up pathway. Finally, we propose an algorithm for clinical differential diagnosis of Bartter Syndrome.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (10.1186/s13023-018-0981-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.