Convenient diagnosis of spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy using a microchip electrophoresis system

Spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy (SBMA) is a slowly progressive motor neuron disease. Lower and primary sensory neuronopathy is one of the major neuropathological changes that occurs in SBMA. However, many sings are common to SBMA and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and SBMA patients are sometimes diagnosed with ALS. Leuprorelin may be used to treat SBMA, but an accurate diagnosis is necessary for treatment and care. Genetic diagnosis can be performed to detect the expansion of a CAG repeat in the androgen receptor gene in SBMA patients. To screen for this expansion, we used a microchip electrophoresis system. The discrepancy between the actual repeat length and that found by the microchip electrophoresis system was roughly dependent on the repeat length. The mean difference was -6.8 base pairs (bp) in SBMA patients, -0.30 bp in controls. The microchip electrophoresis results were approximately 2 CAG repeats shorter than the actual repeat length in SBMA patients. Using this method, we screened our ALS samples (31 were familial, 271 were sporadic): 4 subjects were diagnosed with SBMA; 2 had familial ALS, and 2 had sporadic ALS (0.7%). The microchip electrophoresis system is semi-quantitative, convenient and useful for screening a large number of samples.