Deletion of the proximal short arm of chromosome 8.

We report on a 5-month-old boy with a de novo interstitial deletion of the proximal short arm of chromosome 8 (p21p11.2). He manifested bilateral cleft lip and palate, and apparent hypogonadism. Four previous case reports with similar deletions (p11.1p21) were associated with hypogonadotropic hypogonadism [Beighle et al., Hum Genet 38:113-121, 1977] and hereditary spherocytosis (HS) [Chilcote et al., Blood 6:156-159, 1987; Kitatani et al., Hum Genet 78:94-95, 1988; Lux et al., Nature 345:736-739, 1990]. Our patient has no demonstrable red blood cell abnormality, suggesting that the gene for HS is located in the region 8p11.1 to 8p11.2.