Prevalence of mitochondrial DNA mutations in sporadic patients with nonsyndromic sensorineural hearing loss

Several mitochondrial DNA mutations have been reported to be associated with nonsyndromic hearing loss in several families. However, little is known about the prevalence of these mutations in sporadic patients with nonsyndromic sensorineural hearing loss.

The purpose of our study was to investigate the incidence of these mitochondrial DNA mutations in such population.

A total of 178 sporadic patients with nonsyndromic sensorineural hearing loss were enrolled in this study. Genomic DNA was extracted from the peripheral blood sample. We employed the SNaPshot(®) sequencing method to detect five mitochondrial DNA mutations, including A1555G and A827G in 12S rRNA gene and A7445G, 7472insC, and T7511C in tRNA(Ser(UCN)) gene. Meanwhile, we used polymerase chain reaction and sequenced the products to screen GJB2 gene mutations in patients carrying mitochondrial DNA mutations.

We failed to detect the presence of A1555G mutation in 12S rRNA gene, and of A7445G, 7472insC, T7511C mutations in tRNA(Ser(UCN)) gene in our population. However, we found that 6 patients (3.37%) were carriers of a homozygous A827G mutation and one of them also carried homozygous GJB2 235delC mutation.

Our findings in the present study indicate that even in sporadic patients with nonsyndromic sensorineural hearing loss, mitochondrial DNA mutations might also contribute to the clinical phenotype.