Need Help?

Germline hypomorphic CARD11 mutations in severe atopic disease

We described five patients from four unrelated families who had severe atopic dermatitis and susceptibility to mild skin viral infections. Some patients also exhibited other allergic symptoms such as asthma and food allergy. We performed targeted sequencing for affected patients A-I of family A and B-I of family B, whole exome sequencing for D-I, D-II.1 and healthy mother D-II.3 of family D, and whole genome sequencing for C-I and healthy mother C-II.2 of family C. We identified three different novel damaging missense mutations of CARD11 (GeneID:84433) in patients A-I (L194P), B-I (R975W), and C-I (E57D). In patients D-I and D-II.1, a dup183_196 (p.K196_V197insMKEERDSYNDELVK) mutation was found in the coil-coil domain of the protein. These mutations act as dominant negatives impeding the scaffolding function of the wild type protein, which leads to downstream NF-kB and mTORC1 signaling defects after TCR stimulation. Sanger sequencing later identified the corresponding CARD11 mutations in the affected family members (C-II.1, D-II.2) that are not included in the dbGaP submission. Hypomorphic CARD11 dominant negative mutants are novel causes of severe atopic disease.