Cerebral small vessel disease related to a heterozygous nonsense mutation in HtrA1

Abstract

Homozygous or compound heterozygous mutations in the high-temperature requirement A serine protease 1 gene (HTRA1) cause cerebral autosomal recessive arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy, a very rare hereditary cerebral small-vessel disease (SVD). Recently, the relationship between some heterozygous HTRA1 mutations, most of which are missense, and the occurrence of cerebral SVD has been reported. We herein report a patient with cerebral SVD carrying a heterozygous nonsense p.R302X mutation in HTRA1. This patient had a family history of cerebral infarction. This report suggests that a heterozygous p.R302X mutation in HTRA1 causes an autosomal dominant cerebral SVD.