Estimate of the frequency of Wilson's disease in the US Caucasian population: a mutation analysis approach.

The frequency of Wilson's disease in many populations is thought to be about one in 40000 persons, based on case and autopsy studies. Although the Wilson's disease gene has been identified, there is such a large number of mutations already known that it is not currently feasible to determine disease gene frequency by mutation analysis of a population. We have used a novel approach to obtain an estimate of the number of cases of Wilson's disease expected at birth in the US Caucasian population. We used data from four studies to determine that approximately one-third of Wilson's disease mutations in US Caucasian Wilson's disease patients are due to His-->Gln at the 1069 position. We then determined the frequency of this mutation in random DNA samples from 2601 US Caucasian newborns to be 0.285%. Multiplying by three gives an expected Wilson's disease heterozygote frequency of 0.855% and an allele frequency of 0.428%, or 0.00428. These data translate into a Wilson's disease frequency of about one in 55000 births. The 95% confidence interval is rather broad, ranging from about one in 18000 to one in 700000 births, but will be reduced as more data are added.