RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Cryopyrin-associated Periodic Syndromes in Italian Patients: Evaluation of the Rate of Somatic NLRP3 Mosaicism and Phenotypic Characterization JF The Journal of Rheumatology JO J Rheumatol FD The Journal of Rheumatology SP 1667 OP 1673 DO 10.3899/jrheum.170041 VO 44 IS 11 A1 Denise Lasigliè A1 Anna Mensa-Vilaro A1 Denise Ferrera A1 Roberta Caorsi A1 Federica Penco A1 Giuseppe Santamaria A1 Marco Di Duca A1 Giulia Amico A1 Kenji Nakagawa A1 Francesca Antonini A1 Alberto Tommasini A1 Rita Consolini A1 Antonella Insalaco A1 Marco Cattalini A1 Laura Obici A1 Romina Gallizzi A1 Francesca Santarelli A1 Genny del Zotto A1 Mariasavina Severino A1 Anna Rubartelli A1 Roberto Ravazzolo A1 Alberto Martini A1 Isabella Ceccherini A1 Ryuta Nishikomori A1 Marco Gattorno A1 Juan I. Arostegui A1 Silvia Borghini YR 2017 UL http://www.jrheum.org/content/44/11/1667.abstract AB Objective. To evaluate the rate of somatic NLRP3 mosaicism in an Italian cohort of mutation-negative patients with cryopyrin-associated periodic syndrome (CAPS).Methods. The study enrolled 14 patients with a clinical phenotype consistent with CAPS in whom Sanger sequencing of the NLRP3 gene yielded negative results. Patients’ DNA were subjected to amplicon-based NLRP3 deep sequencing.Results. Low-level somatic NLRP3 mosaicism has been detected in 4 patients, 3 affected with chronic infantile neurological cutaneous and articular syndrome and 1 with Muckle-Wells syndrome. Identified nucleotide substitutions encode for 4 different amino acid exchanges, with 2 of them being novel (p.Y563C and p.G564S). In vitro functional studies confirmed the deleterious behavior of the 4 somatic NLRP3 mutations. Among the different neurological manifestations detected, 1 patient displayed mild loss of white matter volume on brain magnetic resonance imaging.Conclusion. The allele frequency of somatic NLRP3 mutations occurs generally under 15%, considered the threshold of detectability using the Sanger method of DNA sequencing. Consequently, routine genetic diagnostic of CAPS should be currently performed by next-generation techniques ensuring high coverage to identify also low-level mosaicism, whose actual frequency is yet unknown and probably underestimated.