Autosomal recessive hereditary motor and sensory neuropathy with focally folded myelin sheaths: clinical, electrophysiologic, and genetic aspects of a large family.

We describe 10 patients from a large family with early onset motor and sensory neuropathy. Six were still living at the time of the study. In all cases, early motor milestones had been achieved. Mean age at onset of symptoms was 34 months; these included progressive distal and proximal muscle weakness of lower limbs. Pes equinovarus developed in all patients during childhood. Slight facial weakness was present in four patients, and one of them also had bilateral facial synkinesia. Intellectual function was normal in all cases. There was no evidence of thickened peripheral nerves. All three adult patients (mean age, 27 years) were seriously handicapped and wheelchair-bound. Death occurred in the fourth to fifth decade of life and the duration of the illness varied from 27 to 39 years. Motor nerve conduction velocities ranged from 15 to 17 m/sec in the upper limbs of the youngest patients, and were undetectable in the adult patients. Sensitive action potentials were almost always absent. In all patients, auditory evoked potentials showed abnormally delayed interpeak I-III latencies. The most prominent pathologic finding was a highly unusual myelin abnormality consisting of irregular redundant loops and folding of the myelin sheath. The genealogic study gave strong evidence of autosomal-recessive inheritance. The molecular analysis failed to demonstrate either duplication in the chromosome 17p11.2-12, point mutations in the four exons of the PMP-22 (17p11.2) and the six exons of the Po (1q21-q25) genes, or linkage to chromosome 8q13-21.1.