Identifying pathogenic germline variants in men with metastatic prostate cancer is important for therapeutic options and for identifying relatives who may have a high cancer risk. To keep genetic testing costs manageable, it is important to identify which patients should be selected for testing. In this study, we compared expected costs and number of identified pathogenic variants in two scenarios: offering genetic testing to...

Epilepsy represents a highly prevalent neurological disorder with a significant genetic component, particularly implicating ion channel genes, including SCN1A . In this study, 431 individuals with heterogeneous paediatric-onset epilepsy phenotypes were assessed at the Department of Medical Genetics, University of Pécs between 2018 and 2024. Genetic investigations employed Sanger sequencing, targeted epilepsy gene panels, whole...

Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) represent a powerful platform for disease modeling, especially in monogenic diseases as they preserve the donor’s genetic background while enabling directed differentiation into disease-relevant cell types. This makes them highly suitable for studying disease mechanisms in a patient-specific and physiologically relevant context. Although CRISPR/Cas9 is widely applied for genome edi...

Weiss-Kruszka syndrome (WSKA; OMIM 618619) is a rare autosomal dominant neurodevelopmental disorder caused by haploinsufficiency of ZNF462, a zinc-finger transcription factor involved in chromatin regulation and early embryonic development. WSKA is characterized by developmental delay, hypotonia, craniofacial dysmorphic features (around 8) and variable congenital anomalies. Genome-wide DNAm profiling was performed on periphera...

Pathogenic variation of SLC26A 4 gene causes both Pendred syndrome (PDS) and non-syndromic enlarged vestibular aqueduct (NSEVA/DFNB4), two autosomal recessive disorders. The former accounts for approximately 6% of human genetic hearing loss, making it the second most common form of syndromic deafness after Usher syndrome, while the latter is the most common radiological malformation associated with childhood sensorineural hear...

Exome sequencing (ES) has become a primary tool for diagnosing neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), yet the interpretation of genetic variants in large, heterogeneous cohorts presents significant challenges that automated pipelines often fail to resolve. This study showcases the complexities and novel findings derived from a decade-long analysis of 419 Italian NDD patient-parent trios. While ES established a molecular diagnosi...

A central challenge in polygenic risk prediction is measuring and controlling for confounding due to population stratification. Standard approaches include adjusting for leading principal components (PCs) of genetic variation and using linear mixed models in genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Evidence of adequate control is typically inferred from reductions in the linkage disequilibrium score regression (LDSC) intercept...

Chromosomal triplications are rare structural variations often associated with complex phenotypes. We report the molecular characterization of a novel intrachromosomal triplication at 18q12.1q21.2 identified in a fetus with ultrasound abnormalities. Conventional karyotyping and array-CGH revealed a partial tetrasomy and a 26 Mb region of loss of homozygosity (LOH), extending from the triplication to the telomere. Long-read seq...

While falling costs have expanded access to genomic sequencing, clinical utility is frequently hindered by the challenge of interpreting complex genetic data. Variant analysis for rare disease patients especially requires significant time and expertise, creating a bottleneck that delays diagnostics. Although advances in genetic variant classification have improved diagnostic precision, they have also increased the identificati...

Selective immunoglobulin A deficiency (IgAD) is the most prevalent primary immunodeficiency and frequently coexists with autoimmune diseases (ADs), suggesting a shared genetic etiology. While genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified only a few risk loci for IgAD and hundreds for ADs, systematic cross-trait analyses are lacking, leaving the shared genetic architecture and underlying mechanisms poorly understood. I...

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most prevalent and heritable of neurodevelopmental disorders. To characterize the genetic variants contributing to this heritability, we studied families with members affected by ADHD. Genome-wide array data were obtained on two cohorts: NHGRI Family Cohort (359 nuclear families,1538 individuals) and NCR Family Cohort (25 multigenerational and 132 nuclear families,...