Pitfalls of whole exome sequencing in undefined clinical conditions with a suspected genetic etiology

Background: Whole-Exome Sequencing (WES) is a valuable tool for the molecular diagnosis of patients with a suspected genetic condition. In complex and heterogeneous diseases, the interpretation of WES variants is more challenging given the absence of diagnostic handles and other reported cases with overlapping clinical presentations.

Objective: To describe candidate variants emerging from trio-WES and possibly associated with the clinical phenotype in clinically heterogeneous conditions.

Methods: We performed WES in ten patients from eight families, selected because of the lack of a clear clinical diagnosis or suspicion, the presence of multiple clinical signs, and the negative results of traditional genetic tests.

Results: Although we identified ten candidate variants, reaching the diagnosis of these cases is challenging, given the complexity and the rarity of these syndromes and because affected genes are already associated with known genetic diseases only partially recapitulating patients' phenotypes. However, the identification of these variants could shed light into the definition of new genotype-phenotype correlations. Here, we describe the clinical and molecular data of these cases with the aim of favoring the match with other similar cases and, hopefully, confirm our diagnostic hypotheses.

Conclusion: This study emphasizes the major limitations associated with WES data interpretation, but also highlights its clinical utility in unraveling novel genotype-phenotype correlations in complex and heterogeneous undefined clinical conditions with a suspected genetic etiology.