Detection of a novel single nucleotide polymorphism of the human thiopurine s-methyltransferase gene in a Chinese individual.

A 62-year-old Chinese patient with recurrent pompholyx submitted his blood sample for pre-treatment thiopurine S-methyltransferase (TPMT) pharmacogenetic profiling, and it was found to harbour a novel single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP). The novel SNP, detected by mRNA sequencing, was a c.2T>C (g.11018T>C) transition in the start codon, causing a Met1Thr amino acid change. This finding was confirmed on a subsequent blood sample from the same patient by DNA sequencing. The patient was genotyped as TPMT*1/*29, sequentially named as such following the latest TPMT SNP (TPMT*1/*28) at the time of writing. The novel SNP is expected to result in complete lack of protein translation, similar to the impact exerted by TPMT*14, another start codon SNP of the TPMT gene.