Chediak-Higashi syndrome in the cat: prenatal diagnosis by evaluation of amniotic fluid cells

Chediak-Higashi syndrome: Report on five Saudi Arab children and review of the literature

Five cases of the Chediak-Higashi Syndrome (CHS) among Saudi Arab children were diagnosed between June 1978 and December 1990. All patients were males, ages 18 months to ten years, born to first degree consanguineous parents. All showed the typical somatic and laboratory characteristics of this syndrome with characteristic hyperpigmented irides in four patients. Three patients were in the accelerated phase, two of whom responded to a combination chemotherapy (vincristine and prednisone) and one improved after splenectomy. All patients died before they passed the first decade of their lives. This report is the first detailed description of CHS among Arab children in the Arabian peninsula.

Prenatal diagnosis of Chediak-Higashi syndrome

We report the first prenatal diagnosis of an affected fetus with Chediak-Higashi syndrome (CHS). Diagnosis was accomplished via fetal blood sampling at 17 menstrual weeks and was confirmed after birth. Retrospective measurement of the largest acid phosphatase-positive lysosomes in cultured amniotic fluid cells and chorionic villus cells showed that in CHS these lysosomes are significantly larger than those in normal cells. This method may be used for prenatal diagnosis of CHS by amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling (CVS).

Prenatal diagnosis of Chediak-Higashi syndrome in the cat by evaluation of cultured chorionic cells

The autosomal recessive disease Chediak-Higashi syndrome (CHS) is a progressive and generally fatal disease of humans. The underlying genetic defect in CHS is unknown and prenatal diagnostic methods have not been applied to this disease. The purpose of this study was to determine if CHS chorionic cells expressed a characteristic of CHS--enlarged lysosomes--that would permit the prenatal diagnosis of the disease. Cats with CHS, which have been shown to be homologous with human CHS, were used as the model system in this study. Chorionic tissue samples were obtained from CHS and control cat fetuses and cultures of cells were established. Acid phosphatase was utilized as a marker of lysosomes and cultures of chorionic fibroblasts from CHS and control fetuses were stained histochemically for acid phosphatase. The diameter of the largest lysosomes in 150 cells of each fetus was determined. The mean (+/- SD) diameter (in microns) of the largest lysosomes of normal fetuses was 0.9 +/- 0.13 (range 0.5-7.0 microns), whereas the mean diameter of lysosomes in CHS chorionic cells was 3.9 +/- 0.65 microns (range 0.5-25 microns). These means were significantly different (P less than 0.0001). These data suggest that it should be possible to diagnose human CHS in the first trimester by chorionic villus sampling.