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Biomedical subjects

Edoardo Malfatti

Publications and source records attributed to Edoardo Malfatti.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

Congenital core myopathy linked to SOX5: Expanding the phenotypical spectrum of Lamb-Shaffer syndrome.

Haploinsufficiency of SOX5 causes Lamb-Shaffer syndrome, a rare condition with developmental delay, impaired language and intellectual disability and optic nerve abnormalities. Muscle involvement is poorly characterized. We report a 20-year-old woman with neonatal hypotonia, delayed motor milestones, proximal weakness and learning difficulties. Serum creatine kinase was normal. Electroneuromyography revealed a mild myogenic pattern. Muscle biopsy revealed myopathic changes, with cores and protein aggregates. Whole genome sequencing disclosed a heterozygous pathogenic variant in the SOX5 gene. This case expands the phenotypic spectrum of Lamb-Shaffer syndrome, confirming primary muscle involvement with core myopathy.

Female

Progressive cardiomyopathy with intercalated disc disorganization in a rat model of Becker dystrophy.

Becker muscular dystrophy (BMD) is an X-linked disorder due to in-frame mutations in the DMD gene, leading to a less abundant and truncated dystrophin. BMD is less common and severe than Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) as well as less investigated. To accelerate the search for innovative treatments, we developed a rat model of BMD by deleting the exons 45-47 of the Dmd gene. Here, we report a functional and histopathological evaluation of these rats during their first year of life, compared to DMD and control littermates. BMD rats exhibit moderate damage to locomotor and diaphragmatic muscles but suffer from a progressive cardiomyopathy. Single nuclei RNA-seq analysis of cardiac samples revealed shared transcriptomic abnormalities in BMD and DMD rats and highlighted an altered end-addressing of TMEM65 and Connexin-43 at the intercalated disc, along with electrocardiographic abnormalities. Our study documents the natural history of a translational preclinical model of BMD and reports a cellular mechanism for the cardiac dysfunction in BMD and DMD offering opportunities to further investigate the organization role of dystrophin in intercellular communication.

Animals