Molecular diagnosis of thrombocytopenia-absent radius syndrome using next-generation sequencing

Thrombocytopenia-absent radius (TAR) syndrome is a rare autosomal recessive disease. Patients are compound heterozygotes for a loss-of-function allele, which in most cases is a large genomic deletion on chromosome 1q21.1 containing the RBM8A gene, and a noncoding variant located in the 5'UTR (rs139428292) or intronic (rs201779890) regions of RBM8A. As the molecular genetic testing in TAR requires multiple techniques for detection of copy-number variations (CNV) and nucleotide substitutions, we tested whether a next-generation sequencing (NGS) approach could identify both alterations.