A Study from Turkey: Identification of Copy Number Variants in Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract Recent studies suggest that copy number variations (CNVs) play a significant role in the aetiology of ASD. This study aims to investigate CNVs, which are thought to be an important factor in ASD etiology. In addition it was aimed to specify the clinical usefulness of chromosomal microarrays (CMA) in the examination of ASD patients in Turkish population. Of 47 children (60.34±25.60 months; 82.9% boys) with ASD were constructed the sample. The karyotype structure of all participants was found to be normal using conventional cytogenetic methods. DNA obtained from the venous blood samples of the participants was evaluated using SurePrint G3 ISCA V2 CGH 8x60K Array (Agilent Technologies Santa Clara, CA, USA). We have identified 8 CNVs, ranging in size from 55 kb to 6.5 Mb in 7 (5 boys) of 47 children with ASD of the 4 of 8 CNVs were classified as pathogenic, which were 9p24.3p24.2 deletion in 3 Mb size, 15q11-q13 duplication in 6.5 Mb size, 16p11.2 deletion in 598 kb size and 22q13.3 deletion in 55 kb size. According to results has been demonstrated that diagnostic yield of CMA in Turkish children with ASD was 8.5%. Our results indicate that CNVs contribute a part to the genetic aetiology of Turkish children with ASD. In accordance with the literature, these results emphasize the clinical importance of CMA to investigate the aetiology of ASD.