Objective: Our aim is to establish genetic diagnosis of congenital generalized lipodystrophy (CGL) using targeted massively parallel sequencing (MPS), also known as next-generation sequencing (NGS).
Methods: Nine unrelated individuals with a clinical diagnosis of CGL were recruited. We used a customized panel to capture genes related to genetic lipodystrophies. DNA libraries were generated, sequenced using the Illumina MiSeq, and bioinformatics analysis was performed.
Results: An accurate genetic diagnosis was stated for all nine patients. Four had pathogenic variants in AGPAT2 and three in BSCL2. Three large homozygous deletions in AGPAT2 were identified by copy-number variant analysis.
Conclusion: Although we have found allelic variants in only 2 genes related to CGL, the panel was able to identify different variants including deletions that would have been missed by Sanger sequencing. We believe that MPS is a valuable tool for the genetic diagnosis of multi-genes related diseases, including CGL.
Keywords: Berardinelli-Seip syndrome; Congenital generalized lipodystrophy; deep sequencing; massively parallel sequencing.