MedGen

Autosomal recessive spastic ataxia of Charlevoix-Saguenay (ARSACS) is clinically characterized by a progressive cerebellar ataxia, peripheral neuropathy, and spasticity. Disease onset of classic ARSACS is often in early childhood, leading to delayed walking because of gait unsteadiness in very young toddlers, while an increasing number of individuals with disease onset in teenage or early-adult years are now being described. Typically the ataxia is followed by lower-limb spasticity and later by peripheral neuropathy – although pronounced peripheral neuropathy has been observed as a first sign of ARSACS. Oculomotor disturbances, dysarthria, and upper-limb ataxia develop with slower progression than the other findings. Brain imaging demonstrates atrophy of the superior vermis and the cerebellar hemisphere with additional findings on MRI, such as linear hypointensities in the pons and hyperintense rims around the thalami. Many affected individuals (though not all) have yellow streaks of hypermyelinated fibers radiating from the edges of the optic disc noted on ophthalmologic exam, and thickened retinal fibers can be demonstrated by optical coherence tomography. Mild intellectual disability, hearing loss, and urinary urgency and incontinence have been reported in some individuals. [from GeneReviews]

Hereditary thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP), also known as Upshaw-Schulman syndrome (USS), is a rare autosomal recessive thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA). Clinically, acute phases of TTP are defined by microangiopathic mechanical hemolytic anemia, severe thrombocytopenia, and visceral ischemia. Hereditary TTP makes up 5% of TTP cases and is caused mostly by biallelic mutation in the ADAMTS13 gene, or in very rare cases, by monoallelic ADAMTS13 mutation associated with a cluster of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs); most cases of all TTP (95%) are acquired via an autoimmune mechanism (see 188030). Hereditary TTP is more frequent among child-onset TTP compared with adult-onset TTP, and its clinical presentation is significantly different as a function of its age of onset. Child-onset TTP usually starts in the neonatal period with hematological features and severe jaundice. In contrast, almost all cases of adult-onset hereditary TTP are unmasked during the first pregnancy of a woman whose disease was silent during childhood (summary by Joly et al., 2018). [from OMIM]

An aggressive and life-threatening form of thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA) characterized by profound peripheral thrombocytopenia, microangiopathic hemolytic anemia (MAHA) and organ failure of variable severity and is comprised of a congenital (cTTP) and acquired, immune-mediated (iTTP) form. [from ORDO]