Macular dystrophies associated with Stargardt-like phenotypes

Stargardt-like phenotype has been described as associated with pathogenic variants besides the ABCA4 gene. This study aimed to describe four cases with retinal appearance of Stargardt disease phenotypes and unexpected molecular findings.

This report reviewed medical records of four patients with macular dystrophy and clinical features of Stargardt disease. Ophthalmic examination, fundus imaging, and next-generation sequencing were performed to evaluate pathogenic variants related to the phenotypes.

Patients presented macular atrophy and pigmentary changes suggesting Stargardt disease. The phenotypes of the two patients were associated with autosomal dominant inheritance pattern genes (RIMS1 and CRX) and in the other two patients were associated with recessive dominant inheritance pattern genes (CRB1 and RDH12) with variants predicted to be pathogenic.

Macular dystrophies may have phenotypic similarities to Stargardt-like phenotype associated with other genes besides the classic ones.