Giant axonal neuropathy caused by compound heterozygosity for a maternally inherited microdeletion and a paternal mutation within the GAN gene.

Different missense, nonsense and frameshift mutations in the GAN gene encoding gigaxonin have been described to cause giant axonal neuropathy, a severe early-onset progressive neurological disease with autosomal recessive inheritance. By oligonucleotide array CGH analysis, we identified a 57-131 kb microdeletion affecting this gene in a patient with developmental delay, ataxia, areflexia, macrocephaly, and strikingly frizzy hair. The microdeletion was inherited from the mother and mutation analysis revealed a paternally inherited missense mutation c.1456G>A in exon 9 on the other allele. Our findings illustrate the power of higher resolution array CGH studies and highlight the importance of considering copy number variations in autosomal recessive diseases.