ArticleGenetics in medicine : official journal of the American College of Medical Genetics2025
Diagnosing missed cases of spinal muscular atrophy in genome, exome, and panel sequencing data sets.
Article in Genetics in medicine : official journal of the American College of Medical Genetics, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Characterisation of the SMN1/2 locus using a highly specific variant caller on whole-genome sequence data from 500,000 individuals.European journal of human genetics : EJHG · 2026Article
- Clinical utility of genome sequencing in rare diseases: lessons from a single-center study of 1,452 Korean families.NPJ genomic medicine · 2025Article
- GREGoR: accelerating genomics for rare diseases.Nature · 2025Article
- The evolving genetic landscape of neuromuscular fetal akinesias.Journal of neuromuscular diseases · 2025Review
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39 authors.
Funding
Abstract
purposeWe set out to develop a publicly available tool that could accurately diagnose spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) in exome, genome, or panel sequencing data sets aligned to a GRCh37, GRCh38, or T2T reference genome.
methodsThe SMA Finder algorithm detects the most common genetic causes of SMA by evaluating reads that overlap the c.840 position of the SMN1 and SMN2 paralogs. It uses these reads to determine whether an individual most likely has 0 functional copies of SMN1.
resultsWe developed SMA Finder and evaluated it on 16,626 exomes and 3911 genomes from the Broad Institute Center for Mendelian Genomics, 1157 exomes and 8762 panel samples from Tartu University Hospital, and 198,868 exomes and 198,868 genomes from the UK Biobank. SMA Finder's false-positive rate was below 1 in 200,000 samples, its positive predictive value was greater than 96%, and its true-positive rate was 29 out of 29. Most of these SMA diagnoses had initially been clinically misdiagnosed as limb-girdle muscular dystrophy.
conclusionOur extensive evaluation of SMA Finder on exome, genome, and panel sequencing samples found it to have nearly 100% accuracy and demonstrated its ability to reduce diagnostic delays, particularly in individuals with milder subtypes of SMA. Given this accuracy, the common misdiagnoses identified here, the widespread availability of clinical confirmatory testing for SMA, and the existence of treatment options, we propose that it is time to add SMN1 to the American College of Medical Genetics list of genes with reportable secondary findings after genome and exome sequencing.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.