A simple method for diagnosis of autosomal recessive spinal muscular atrophy by denaturing high-performance liquid chromatography

Autosomal recessive spinal muscular atrophy is caused by mutations in the survival motoneuron (SMN) gene. There are two nearly identical copies of this gene present on chromosome 5q13; however, only the telomeric copy of this gene is affected in spinal muscular atrophy In this study, we describe a new method to detect SMN gene deletion by denaturing high-performance liquid chromatography, which is also simple to perform but is faster and more specific. (J Child Neurol 2003;18:269-271).