The phenotypic spectrum of dihydrolipoamide dehydrogenase deficiency in Saudi Arabia

Dihydrolipoamide dehydrogenase deficiency (DLDD) is a rare metabolic disorder inherited in an autosomal recessive manner. This heterogeneous disease has a variable clinical presentation, onset, and biochemical markers.

We retrospectively reviewed the clinical and molecular diagnosis of eight cases with DLDD from four referral centers in Saudi Arabia.

Remarkably, we found hepatic involvement ranging from acute hepatic failure to chronic hepatitis in five patients. In addition, neurological disorders in the form of seizures, developmental delay, ataxia, hypotonia and psychomotor symptoms were found in five patients, two of them with a combination of hepatic and neurological symptoms. In addition, only one patient had recurrent episodes of hypoglycemia. While most patients had the hepatic form of homozygous variant c.685G > T in the DLD gene, one patient was found to have a novel variant c.623C > T that had neurological and hepatic symptoms.

We describe the largest reported DLDD cohort in the Saudi population. Clinical, biochemical, radiological, and molecular characterization was reviewed and no clear genotype-phenotype correlation was found in this cohort.