Frequency and distribution of polyQ disease intermediate-length repeat alleles in healthy Italian population

Background: Huntington disease (HD) and spinocerebellar ataxia type 1-2-17 (SCA1-2-17) are adult-onset autosomal dominant diseases, caused by triplet repeat expansions in the HTT, ATXN1, ATXN2, and TBP genes. Alleles with a repeat number just below the pathological threshold are associated with reduced penetrance and meiotic instability and are defined as intermediate alleles (IAs). Objectives: We aimed to determine the frequencies of IAs in healthy Italian subjects and to compare the proportion of the IAs with the prevalence of the respective diseases. Methods: We analyzed the triplet repeat size in HTT, ATXN1, ATXN2, and TBP genes in the DNA samples from 729 consecutive adult healthy Italian subjects. Results: IAs associated with reduced penetrance were found in ATXN2 gene (1 subject, 0.1%) and TBP gene (0.82%). IAs at risk for meiotic instability were found in HTT (5.3%) and ATXN2 genes (2.7%). In ATXN1, we found a low percentage of IAs (0.4%). Alleles lacking the common CAT interruption within the CAG sequence were also rare (0.3%). Conclusions: The high frequencies of IAs in HTT and ATXN2 genes suggest a correlation with the prevalence of the diseases in our population and support the hypothesis that IAs could represent a reservoir of new pathological expansions. On the opposite, ATXN1-IA were very rare in respect to the prevalence of SCA1 in our country, and TBP- IA were more frequent than expected, suggesting that other mechanisms could influence the occurrence of novel pathological expansions.