Whole Exome Sequencing Identifies a Novel Variant in the Pklr Gene Which Worsen the Anemia Status in a Congenital Dyserthropoietic Anemia Patient

Congenital dyserythropoietic anemia (CDAs) is a group of hereditary disorders characterized by ineffective erythropoiesis and distinct morphological abnormalities of erythroblasts in the bone marrow. Diagnosis of CDA is based primarily on the morphology of bone marrow erythroblasts but genetic tests might have more and more important roles recently. Here, we describe a 31-year old female with atypical CDA under regular blood transfusions. The results of blood tests were as followed: RBC: 3080000/µL, Hb: 9.9 g/dL, Hct: 26.8%, MCV: 87.0 fl, MCH:32.2 pg, and MCHC: 36.9 g/L. In this study, analysis of CDA-related genes, including SEC23B, CDAN1, KLF1, and C15orf41, were analyzed by exome sequencing but no pathogenic variant was found. In additional, we analyzed RBC-related genes and a novel variant in the PKLR p.A468G (NP_000289) was found which was also confirmed by Sanger sequence. Variant of PKLR gene has been reported as the cause of pyruvate kinase (PK) deficiency anemia. PK deficiency is the most cause of congenital nonspherocytic hemolytic anemia with GMAF (global minor allele frequency) of 0.0001. The clinical features of PK-deficient patients are highly variable degree of chronic hemolysis with severe neonatal jaundice and fetal anemia at birth. In this case, PKLR p.A468G heterozygous variant was detected in a patient with PK deficiency, as an example of precision diagnosis by exome sequencing.