Assignment of microsatellite sequences to the region duplicated in CMT1A (17p12): a useful tool for diagnosis

Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 1A (CMT1A), the most prevalent form of the peripheral hereditary neuropathies, has been associated with a duplication of a genomic segment of 1.5 Mb, located in 17p11.2. Recently, the same segment has been found to be deleted in patients with another peripheral neuropathy, hereditary neuropathy with liability to pressure palsies (HNPP). Highly polymorphic markers are rare in this area, rendering the diagnosis highly dependent either on invasive examinations (like nerve biopsy) or not totally reliable (like gene dosage). Thus, we used a contig of YACs, including the whole region duplicated in CMT1A, to map highly polymorphic microsatellite loci, designed in Genethon. We showed that four of these loci are located in the duplicated region, allowing us to propose them as diagnostic markers for CMT1A and HNPP.