Targeted NGS Yields Plentiful Ultra-Rare Variants in Inborn Errors of Immunity Patients

Abstract

Inborn errors of immunity (IEI) include a large group of inherited diseases sharing either poor, dysregulated, or absent and/or acquired function in one or more components of the immune system. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) has driven a rapid increase in the recognition of such defects, though the wide heterogeneity of genetically diverse but phenotypically overlapping diseases has often prevented the molecular characterization of the most complex patients. Two hundred and seventy-two patients were submitted to three successive NGS-based gene panels composed of 58, 146, and 312 genes. Along with pathogenic and likely pathogenic causative gene variants, accounting for the corresponding disorders (37/272 patients, 13.6%), a number of either rare (probably) damaging variants in genes unrelated to patients' phenotype, variants of unknown significance (VUS) in genes consistent with their clinics, or apparently inconsistent benign, likely benign, or VUS variants were also detected. Finally, a remarkable amount of yet unreported variants of unknown significance were also found, often recurring in our dataset. The NGS approach demonstrated an expected IEI diagnostic rate. However, defining the appropriate list of genes for these panels may not be straightforward, and the application of unbiased approaches should be taken into consideration, especially when patients show atypical clinical pictures.

Keywords: NGS-based gene panels; autoinflammation; bone marrow failure; genotype-phenotype correlation; lymphoproliferation; next-generation sequencing (NGS).

Figure 1

Breakdown of a total of 272 patients with unclassified cytopenias (either central or peripheral), immune dysregulation, autoimmunity, and autoinflammation that underwent genetic tests at the Gaslini Institute from 2015 to 2019, through the three consecutive overlapping gene panels shown at the bottom.