AHC is a rare and severe neurological disorder, and characterized by episodic hemiplegia or quadriplegia attacks, accompanied by other paroxysmal symptoms of oculomotor abnormalities, dystonia, seizures and autonomic disturbances; the age of onset usually occurrs before 18 months of life. Sodium-potassium ATPase alpha3 subunit (ATP1A3) has recently been identified as a causal gene for sporadic AHC by three groups. However, there has not been any large genetic study on a Chinese cohort. In the submitted data, whole-exome sequencing of three trios and three sporadic cases in a Chinese cohort produced an average of 18.8 gigabases of raw sequence. Through our analysis pipeline including BWA mapping, GATK recalibration, variant calling and filtering, all six patients contained missense mutations in ATP1A3 which were further confirmed as de novo mutations. Along with validation in additional patients, this study confirmed ATP1A3 as a causal gene in Chinese AHC patients, and reported six novel mutations.

Chinese Alternating Hemiplegia of Childhood (AHC) Disease Study

ATP1A3 Mutations and Genotype-Phenotype Correlation of Alternating Hemiplegia of Childhood in Chinese Patients