A new case of autosomal recessive agammaglobulinaemia with impaired pre-B cell differentiation due to a large deletion of the IGH locus Abstract Males with X-linked agammaglobulinaemia (XLA) due to mutations in the Bruton tyrosine kinase gene constitute the major group of congenital hypogammaglobulinaemia with absence of peripheral B cells. In these cases, blockages between the pro-B and pre-B cell stage in the bone marrow are found. The remaining male and female cases clinically similar to XLA represent a genotypically heterogeneous group of diseases. In these patients, various autosomal recessive disorders have been identified such as mutations affecting IGHM, CD79A, IGLL1 genes involved in the composition of the pre-B cell receptor (pre-BCR) or the BLNK gene implicated in pre-BCR signal transduction. In this paper, we report on a young female patient characterised by a severe non-XLA agammaglobulinaemia that represents a new case of Igl defect. We show that the B cell blockage at the pro-B to pre-B cell transition is due to a large homologous deletion in the IGH locus encompassing the IGHM gene leading to the inability to form a functional pre-BCR. The deletion extends from the beginning of the diversity (D) region to the IGHG2 gene, with all JH segments and IGHM, IGHD, IGHG3 and IGHG1 genes missing. Conclusion: alteration in Igl expression seems to be relatively frequent and could account for most of the reported cases of autosomal recessive agammaglobulinaemia.Keywords Agammaglobulinaemia AE B cell blockage AE IGH locus AE Immunoglobulin gene deletion AE Pre-B cellAbbreviations BET: ethidium bromide AE BTK: Bruton tyrosine kinase gene AE IGH: immunoglobulin heavy chain locus AE pre-BCR: pre-B cell receptor AE XLA: X-linked agammaglobulinaemia
IntroductionRecurrent infections, mostly respiratory, with pyogenic bacteria are the predominant manifestations of children suffering antibody deficiencies. In some of these patients, early B cell development in the bone marrow is arrested and hypogammaglobulinaemia results from the absence of peripheral B cells. In these cases, chronic diarrhoea could also be observed and constitutes a serious clinical problem. This occurs in X-linked agammaglobulinaemia (XLA), also known as Bruton disease, characterised by defects in the Bruton tyrosine kinase gene (BTK) [13,14] that encodes the cytoplasmic tyrosine kinase btk, involved in signal transduction. In these cases, B cell development is blocked in the bone marrow at the pre-B cell stage, resulting in the accumulation of CD34+ CD19+ pro-B cells and in the presence of variable numbers of CD34-CD19+ pre-B cells. Females with a phenotype indistinguishable from XLA have also been described and Conley et al. [2] have estimated that these immunodeficiencies represent 10% of patients with congenital hypogammaglobulinaemia. The defects behind such autosomal recessive disorders have been recently identified and shown to affect predominantly the pre-B cell receptor (pre-BCR), which is an absolute prerequisite for pro-B to pre-B cell ...