Clinical and Genetic Characterization of Patients with Artemis Deficiency in Japan

Purpose: 

Artemis is an exonuclease essential for V(D)J recombination and repair of DNA double-stranded breaks. Pathogenic variants in DCLRE1C encoding Artemis cause T⁻B⁻NK⁺ severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), and patients with Artemis-deficient SCID (ART-SCID) require definitive therapy with allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). Here we describe the clinical and genetic characteristics of patients with ART-SCID who were diagnosed in Japan from 2003 to 2022. 

Methods: 

Clinical data of ART-SCID patients who were diagnosed between 2003 and 2022 in Japan were collected from their physicians using a questionnaire. 

Results: 

ART-SCID diagnosis was made in eight patients from seven families with severe infections within 6 months of life. Two patients had missense variants, five patients had large genomic deletions, and one patient was compound heterozygous for a missense variant and large genomic deletion. All eight underwent allogeneic HCT within 4 months after the diagnosis, 7 receiving a conditioning regimen containing alkylating agents, and one patient without conditioning due to uncontrolled infection. Two patients with poor performance status (PS) died of complications 410 days and 32 days post-HCT, respectively. Of the six surviving patients with a median follow-up time of 8.3 (0.5–17.9) years, three patients had growth retardation. The patients with PS of 0–2 showed a tendency for better overall survival than those with PS 3–4. 

Conclusion: 

Large deletions were the most common genetic cause of ART-SCID in Japan. To improve HCT outcome, early diagnosis with newborn screening for SCID is urgently needed.