Anderson’s disease: No linkage to the apo B locus

David Strich, Robert Goldstein, Alan Phillips, Ruth Shemer, Yael Goldberg, Aharon Razin, Serem Freier*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

19 Scopus citations

Abstract

We describe three patients with Anderson’s disease who are members of one family; the father and mother are close relatives and three of seven children show symptoms of the disease. All patients suffered from diarrhea, failure to thrive, and recurrent infections during infancy. Although these symptoms disappeared later in life, biochemical disorders (such as low plasma levels of apolipoproteins Al and B and cholesterol, resulting in avitaminosis E, plus failure to secrete chylomicrons after a fat meal) persisted. Electron microscopy of enterocytes of one of the patients showed accumulation of lipid vacuoles with no significant aberration of the Golgi apparatus itself. It is possible, therefore, that the disease reflects a defect in chylomicron assembly. We found that low levels of apolipoprotein (apo) B48 were present in the patients’ plasma. This suggests that the processing of the B100 message resulting in apo B48 functions normally. The possibility that a mutation in the apo B gene results in an abnormal apo B48 protein is very unlikely since a variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) polymorphism probe mapped to chromosome 2 failed to show correspondence of the parent alleles with the disease. These observations confirm the suggestion that Anderson’s disease is not linked to the apo B locus.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)257-264
Number of pages8
JournalJournal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition
Volume16
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 1993

Keywords

  • Apo B48
  • Chylomicron assembly
  • VNTR polymorphism

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