Neurológia pre prax 2/2009

Pompe‘s disease in the Czech Republic – blood-screening project in risk patients using a „dried blood spot“

Pompe disease (PD, type 2 glycogenosis, GSD II, acid maltase deficiency) is a progressive genetic disorder caused by the deficiency of lysosomal enzyme with the glycogen accumulation particularly in the skeletal and cardiac muscles. Its incidence is 1:40 000 births and occurs both in childhood and adult age. The disease prognosis is unfavourable, even catastrophic in an infantile form, but its course can be relieved and the patients´ as well as their families´ life quality improved thanks to enzyme replacement therapy (ERT). In the Czech Republic there was initiated last year a project of examining a risk group of patients with PD by screening investigations of blood using the „dried blood spot“ (DBS) method. If the results is positive, the diagnosis will be either confirmed or disproved by means of examining the activity of acid alpha-1.4-glucosidase (GAA) in leukocytes and mutation analysis on the DNA level. The project principal aim is to reveal still not diagnosed PD patients and to improve the knowledge of professional population about clinical manifestations and prognosis of this disorder. Another goal is to find out the PD incidence in the Czech population as well as diagnoses and problems under which the patients have been registered. Positive patients for whom the ERT is suitable will be then treated correctly and early. The examination by means of „dried blood spot“ is a simple and not burdening investigation, and the registration of patients is supposed to be realized by 2010.

Keywords: Pompes disease, glycogenosis Type II, acid maltase deficiency, floppy infant, hypotonia, myopathy, cardiomegaly, enzyme replacement therapy.