Frequent mutation in Chinese patients with infantile type of GSD II in Taiwan: evidence for a founder effect.

Glycogen storage disease type II (GSD II, Pompe's disease), an autosomal recessive inherited disease, is caused by the deficiency of acid alpha-D-glucosidase, which results in the impaired glycogen degradation in lysosome and causes excess glycogen accumulation in lysosome. In Taiwan, the infantile form of GSD II is the most common type of glycogen storage diseases. The frequency of C1935A mutant allele is 0.8 in these Chinese patients. In this study, we analyzed four single point polymorphic markers (324, 1203, 2065, 2338) by ACRS-based RFLP We observed that the alleles possessing the C1935A mutation in 19 of 25 Chinese patients who were heterozygous or homozygous have conserved polymorphic markers, and all of C1935A mutant alleles in these patients are linked to a specific haplotype. The allele frequency of this specific haplotype in 19 Chinese patients and in 42 normal individuals is 0.95 and 0.17, respectively (P<0.005, chi2 = 66.018). This result suggests that the C1935A mutation in Chinese patients with infantile form of GSD II is due to the founder effect.