Background
MYO15A
variants are responsible for human non-syndromic autosomal recessive deafness (
DFNB3
). The majority of
MYO15A
variants are associated with a congenital severe-to-profound hearing loss phenotype, except for
MYO15A
variants in exon 2, which cause a milder auditory phenotype, suggesting a genotype-phenotype correlation of
MYO15A
. However,
MYO15A
variants not in exon 2 related to a milder phenotype have also been reported, indicating that the genotype-phenotype correlation of
MYO15A
is complicated. This study aimed to provide more cases of
MYO15A
variation with diverse phenotypes to analyse this complex correlation.
Methods
Fifteen Chinese autosomal recessive non-syndromic hearing loss (ARNSHL) individuals with
MYO15A
variants (8 males and 7 females) from 14 unrelated families, identified by targeted gene capture of 127 known candidate deafness genes, were recruited. Additionally, we conducted a review of the literature to further analyses all reported
MYO15A
genotype-phenotype relationships worldwide.
Results
We identified 16 novel variants and 12 reported pathogenic
MYO15A
variants in 15 patients, two of which presented with a milder phenotype. Interestingly, one of these cases carried two reported pathogenic variants in exon 2, while the other carried two novel variants not in exon 2. Based on our literature review,
MYO15A
genotype-phenotype correlation analysis showed that almost all domains were reported to be correlated with a milder phenotype. However, variants in the N-terminal domain were more likely to cause a milder phenotype. Using next-generation sequencing (NGS), we also found that the number of known
MYO15A
variants with milder phenotypes in Southeast Asia has increased in recent years.
Conclusion
Our work extended the
MYO15A
variant spectrum, enriched our knowledge of auditory phenotypes, and tried to explore the genotype-phenotype correlation in different populations in order to investigate the cause of the complex
MYO15A
genotype-phenotype correlation.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (10.1186/s12881-019-0790-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.