WFS1 variants in Finnish patients with diabetes mellitus, sensorineural hearing impairment or optic atrophy, and in suicide victims

Mutations in the wolframin gene, WFS1 , cause Wolfram syndrome, a rare recessive neurodegenerative disorder. The clinical features include early-onset bilateral optic atrophy (OA), diabetes mellitus (DM), diabetes insipidus, hearing impairment, urinary tract abnormalities and psychiatric illness, and, furthermore, WFS1 variants appear to be associated with non-syndromic DM and hearing impairment. Variation of WFS1 was investigated in Finnish subjects consisting 182 patients with DM, 117 patients with sensorineural hearing impairment (SNHI) and 44 patients with OA, and in 95 suicide victims. Twenty-two variants were found in the coding region of WFS1 , including three novel nonsynonymous variants. The frequency of the p.[His456] allele was significantly higher in the patients with SNHI (11.5%; corrected P =0.00008), DM (6.6%; corrected P =0.036) or OA (9.1%; corrected P =0.043) than that in the 285 controls (3.3%). The frequency of the p.[His611] allele was 55.8% in the patients with DM being higher than that in the controls (47%; corrected P =0.039). The frequencies of p.[His456] and p.[His611] were similarly increased in an independent group of patients with DM ( N =299). The results support previous findings that genetic variation of WFS1 contributes to the risk of DM and SNHI.