Primary Carnitine Deficiency (SLC22A5) Sequencing and Deletion/Duplication

Background information for Primary Carnitine Deficiency (SLC22A5) Sequencing and Deletion/Duplication:
Characteristics: Hypoketotic hypoglycemia during periods of fasting, hepatomegaly, Reye syndrome, sudden infant death, developmental delay, cardiac and/or skeletal myopathy, hypotonia and enlarged heart.
Incidence: 1 in 40,000 for European Caucasian and Japanese, lower in other populations.
Inheritance: Autosomal recessive.
Cause: Pathogenic SLC22A5 gene mutations.
Clinical Sensitivity: May be as high as 95 percent.
Methodology: Bidirectional sequencing of the entire coding region and intron-exon boundaries of SLC22A5 gene; Multiplex Ligation-dependent Probe Amplification (MLPA) to detect large SLC22A5 coding region deletions/duplications.
Analytical Sensitivity: Greater than 99 percent.
Limitations: Mutations in genes other than SLC22A5 will not be detected; deletion/duplication breakpoints will not be determined; deep intronic mutations and promoter mutations in the SLC22A5 gene will not be detected. Mutations within the primer/probe regions could affect the analytical sensitivity of this assay. Diagnostic errors can occur due to rare sequence variations.