Oculocutaneous albinism in a patient with 17p13.2-pter duplication - a review on the molecular syndromology of 17p13 duplication.

BACKGROUND

Chromosomal duplications involving 17p13.3 have recently been defined as a new distinctive syndrome with several diagnosed patients. Some variation is known to occur in the breakpoints of the duplicated region and, consequently, in the phenotype as well.

AIMS: We report on a patient, the fifth to our knowledge, a 4-year-old girl with a pure de novo subtelomeric 17p13.2-pter duplication. She presents all of the facial features described so far for this duplication and in addition, a unilateral palmar transversal crease and oculocutaneous albinism which has not been reported previously.

METHODS

A detailed molecular description of the reported aberration and correlation with the observed phenotypical features based on a literature review. We discuss the possible molecular etiology of albinism in regard to the mode of inheritance.

CONCLUSION

The new data provided here may be useful for further genotype correlations in syndromes with oculocutaneous albinism, especially of autosomal dominant inheritance.