How to prescribe a genetic test for the diagnosis of autoinflammatory diseases?

The systemic autoinflammatory disorders (SAIDs) are associated with dysregulation of the innate immune system, affecting pro-inflammatory cytokines and apoptosis pathways. The spectrum of SAIDs continues to grow with over 30 different disorders identified to date. The main indication for genetic referral is when a patient presents with clinical symptoms consistent with one or more of the SAIDs. Thus, in making a referral for DNA screening, clinical information that supports the choice for screening of one or more SAIDs genes is required. Many of the SAIDs can display overlapping, partial or atypical symptoms, which makes the differential diagnosis extremely difficult and thus heavily dependent on genetic testing. Various attempts have been aimed at improving the efficiency of SAIDs diagnosis by proposing a set of clinical criteria to guide the genetic analysis of the SAIDs. In the last decade, due to application of the next-generation sequencing (NGS) the genetic diagnosis in patients with SAIDs have greatly improved; novel diseases and disease-associated genes have been identified and remarkable progress has been made in the genetic characterization of the undiagnosed patients and the sporadic cases. To date more than 800 variants have been recorded on the Infevers database, an online repository for DNA changes in genes associated with SAIDs (http://fmf.igh.cnrs.fr/ISSAID/infevers/). Recently, it has been updated with the new guidelines for classification of genetic variants pathogenicity in the in four most recognised SAIDs genes: MEFV, TNFRSF1A, NLRP3 and MVK.