Summary
Severe type 3 VWD (VWD3) is characterised by complete absence or presence of trace
amounts of non-functional von Willebrand factor (VWF). The study was designed to evaluate
the VWF mutations in VWD3 patients and characterise the breakpoints of two identified homozygous
novel large deletions. Patients were diagnosed by conventional tests and VWF multimer
analysis. Mutation screening was performed in 19 VWD3 patients by direct sequencing
of VWF including flanking intronic sequence and multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification
(MLPA) analysis. Breakpoint characterisation of two identified novel large deletions
was done using walking primers and long spanning PCR. A total of 21 different mutations
including 15 (71.4%) novel ones were identified in 17 (89.5%) patients. Of these mutations,
five (23.8%) were nonsense (p.R1659*, p.R1779*, p.R1853*, p.Q2470*, p.Q2520*), one
was a putative splice site (p.M814I) and seven (33.3%) were deletions (p.L254fs*48,
p.C849fs*60, p.L1871fs*6, p.E2720fs*24) including three novel large deletions of exon
14–15, 80,830bp (−41510_657+7928A*del) and 2,231bp [1534–2072T_c.1692G*del(p.512fs*terminus)]
respectively. A patient carried gene conversion comprising of pseudogene harbouring
mutations. The missense mutations (p.G19R, p.K355R, p.D437Y, p.C633R, p.M771V, p.G2044D,
p.C2491R) appear to play a major role and were identified in seven (36.8%) patients.
In conclusion, a high frequency of novel mutations suggests the high propensity of
VWF for new mutations. Missense and deletion mutations found to be a common cause of
VWD3 in cohort of Indian VWD3 patients. Breakpoints characterisation of two large
deletions reveals the double strand break and non-homologous recombination as deletions
mechanism.
Keywords
Type 3 VWD - Phenotype and genotype -
VWF mutation - Large deletion - Non-homologous recombination