The rapid accrual of knowledge in genomic medicine has prompted the reanalysis of preexisting data. 1,2 We clinically reanalyzed data from two patient series that had undergone diagnostic proband-only exome sequencing.

A high rate of bleeding control was achieved with octreotide during acute gastrointestinal bleeding in children with portal hypertension. However, controlled studies are needed for more definitive description of its clinical effects. The role of octreotide is less clear in gastrointestinal bleeding unrelated to portal hypertension.

Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome (SLOS) is a multiple congenital malformation/intellectual disability syndrome, with clinical characteristics encompassing a wide spectrum and great variability. Elucidation of the biochemical and molecular genetic basis for the autosomal recessively inherited SLOS, specifically, understanding SLOS as a cholesterol deficiency syndrome caused by mutations in DHCR7, opened up enormous possibilities for therapeutic intervention. When cholesterol was discovered to be the activator of sonic hedgehog, cholesterol deficiency with inactivation of this developmental patterning gene was thought to be the cause of SLOS malformations, yet this explanation is overly simplistic. Still, despite these important research breakthroughs, there is no proven treatment for SLOS. Better animal models are needed to allow potential treatment testing and the study of disease pathophysiology, which is incompletely understood. Creation of human cellular models will surely be useful, especially models of brain cells. In vivo human studies are essential as well. There have only been limited natural history studies of SLOS to date. Biomarker development will be critical in facilitating clinical trials in this rare condition, since clinical phenotype may change over many years. Additional research in these and other areas is critical if we are to make headway towards ameloriating the effects of this devastating condition.