Autosomal-recessive
spinocerebellar ataxia type 18 (SCAR18) is a rare
neurologic disorder. It is caused by bi-allelic aberrations in the GRID2 gene, encoding an
ionotropic glutamate receptor. In total, 20 affected individuals with mainly homozygous/compound heterozygous intragenic deletions/duplications, two different missense variants and one nonsense variant in GRID2 have been reported, so far. SCAR18 is characterized by delayed psychomotor development,
intellectual disability, severely impaired gait due to
cerebellar ataxia, ocular movement abnormalities, and cerebellar
atrophy in brain imaging. By trio exome sequencing, we now identified a novel homozygous nonsense variant (c.568C > T; p.Gln190*) in GRID2 in a four year old female from a consanguineous family who presented with a particularly severe manifestation of SCAR18. The girl was born after an uneventful pregnancy and showed early-onset, profoundly delayed psychomotor development with no achieved psychomotor milestones at age 4 years. Additionally, she presented with severe
muscular hypotonia, progressive truncal and
appendicular ataxia,
binocular vertical nystagmus,
central hearing loss and incomplete loss of sight. She was dystrophic, interacted only very little and had behavioral anomalies such as eating hair and
bruxism. Brain imaging showed cerebellar hypoplasia, extended cerebrospinal fluid spaces and beginning reduction of cerebral volume. Our findings further delineate the mutational and clinical spectrum of GRID2-associated
spinocerebellar ataxia type 18 and indicate that homozygous nonsense variants are possibly associated with the severe end of the SCAR18 phenotypic spectrum.