Clinical Description
ATP1A3-related neurologic disorders represent a clinical continuum in which three main phenotypes have been described: rapid-onset dystonia-parkinsonism (RDP), alternating hemiplegia of childhood (AHC), and cerebellar ataxia, areflexia, pes cavus, optic atrophy, and sensorineural hearing loss (CAPOS). Individuals with intermediate phenotypes or with only a few features have also been described (see Genotype-Phenotype Correlations).
Rapid-Onset Dystonia-Parkinsonism (RDP)
Clinical diagnostic criteria for RDP include the following [Rosewich et al 2017]:
Abrupt onset of dystonia with or without features of parkinsonism over a few minutes to 30 days
A clear rostrocaudal gradient of involvement (face > arm > leg)
Prominent bulbar findings
Note: Absence of prominent bulbar findings does not preclude the diagnosis.
Family history consistent with autosomal dominant inheritance
Note: Absence of a family history of RDP does not preclude the diagnosis.
Additional features may include the following:
Appearance of symptoms after triggering events such as running, childbirth, emotional stress, or alcoholic binges
Stability of the phenotype with little improvement after its initial appearance
Low concentration of dopamine metabolites in cerebrospinal fluid in some (not all) affected individuals
Absence of other parkinsonian features including pill-rolling tremor and diurnal fluctuation; minimal or no response to standard medications for parkinsonism
The study of the clinical manifestations of RDP has focused primarily on dystonia/parkinsonism [Anselm et al 2009, Blanco-Arias et al 2009, Svetel et al 2010, Tarsy et al 2010]. Age at onset is extremely variable, typically ranging from four to 55 years, although onset at age nine months and after age 60 years has been reported.
Motor findings. The clinical stages of RDP may include mild antecedent dystonic symptoms, primary onset, and occasional second episodes of worsening.
Antecedent symptoms have included nonspecific symptoms of dystonia, usually in the hands and arms. Some individuals reported mild limb cramping, most often involving the hands, prior to development of typical RDP following a physiologic stressor. While minimal or no tremor is typically present at onset, one individual initially had one year of parkinsonism, not dystonia, followed by abrupt onset of oromandibular dystonia with dysarthria. At least two affected individuals had fluctuating symptoms before the deficit became permanent; this has also been described in infants with an RDP-like presentation.
Primary onset is usually paroxysmal or abrupt over hours to several weeks. In all affected individuals in two large US families, progression stopped at or before one month after onset. Many reported specific triggers consisting of either physical or psychological stress. Alcohol was a trigger in many but not all. The bulbar and arm symptoms rarely improve after the primary onset, although four individuals reported mild improvement in leg symptoms.
Occasional second episodes of worsening have been reported in a few individuals who experienced episodes of abrupt worsening of symptoms one to nine years after the initial onset. Because only a few affected individuals have been reexamined over an extended time, documentation of second events is incomplete. The second events resemble the primary onset, with worsening of bulbar, arm, and leg symptoms over a similar time course. Except for these second events, little change is reported over many years in those affected individuals for whom such information is available, although the number of known affected individuals is small and lack of progression of symptoms requires further longitudinal study.
Non-motor features include mood disorders, substance abuse, and psychosis (see also Genotype-Phenotype Correlations). Although anxiety is also prevalent among persons with RDP, rates of anxiety did not significantly differ from family-matched controls without RDP [Brashear et al 2012b]. Cognitive impairment including difficulty with memory and learning, psychomotor speed, attention, and executive functioning has also been reported [Cook et al 2014]. Seizures have been reported in children and adults [Brashear et al 2007, Brashear et al 2012b], often after the appearance of motor symptoms.
Alternating Hemiplegia of Childhood (AHC)
AHC is a complex neurodevelopmental syndrome that most frequently manifests in infancy or early childhood with paroxysmal neurologic symptoms that can last for minutes to hours to even days and sometimes weeks, with remission of symptoms only during sleep and the immediate period post awakening.
Clinical diagnostic criteria for AHC include some constellation of the following (see Note) [Rosewich et al 2017]:
Onset of symptoms before age 18 months
Paroxysmal disturbances including tonic or dystonic spells (either unilaterally of one or more limbs or generalized), oculomotor abnormalities (monocular or binocular nystagmus, intermittent eso- or exotropia, skew deviation, ocular bobbing, ocular flutter), and autonomic phenomena (unilateral or bilateral pupillary dilatation, flushing, pallor affecting one limb or hemibody) during hemiplegic episodes or in isolation
Repeated attacks of hemiplegia involving either side of the body and alternating in laterality
Episodes of quadriparesis or hemi-/quadriplegia as a separate attack or as generalization of a hemiplegic episode
Immediate disappearance of symptoms upon sleeping (symptoms may later resume after waking)
Evidence of developmental delay (speech and language delay, cognitive deficits) and neurologic abnormalities including choreoathetosis, dystonia, and/or ataxia
Note: Diagnostic criteria assume that (1) initial diagnostic workup has not shown evidence of an alternative etiology (e.g., treatable metabolic disorder); (2) brain MRI is normal or with nonspecific features not identifying an alternative pathophysiology (e.g., vascular disease such as moyamoya); and (3) EEG during prolonged episodes of hemiplegia or dystonia does not provide an alternative explanation for episodes.
While neonates and young infants often present with seizure-like episodes, eye movement abnormalities, and autonomic manifestations, they can also present with episodes of flaccid quadriparesis. Paroxysmal episodic neurologic dysfunction is the predominant feature early in the disease course. As affected children age, interictal persistent neurologic dysfunction (including oculomotor apraxia, ataxia, dystonia, parkinsonism, and cognitive and behavioral dysfunction) increases.
More than 50% of children with AHC manifest clinical seizure activity by early childhood. Status epilepticus and status dystonicus can be life-threatening complications in some. For reviews, see Sweney et al [2009], Panagiotakaki et al [2010], Kansagra et al [2013], Sasaki et al [2014b], Heinzen et al [2014], and Rosewich et al [2017].
Additional paroxysmal neurologic symptoms include the following:
More complex dyskinesias
Headache
Epilepsy (focal, partial, or generalized tonic-clonic)
Status epilepticus or status dystonicus
Persistent, interictal neurologic symptoms that become increasingly evident with age include the following:
Ataxia
Oculomotor apraxia
Strabismus
Hypotonia or rigidity
Choreoathetosis
Impaired articulation or bulbar function
Generalized or focal dystonia
Areflexia or hyperreflexia
Non-motor interictal neurologic symptoms include the following:
Other associated features in some individuals with AHC include the following:
CAPOS Syndrome
CAPOS syndrome presents in infancy or childhood with cerebellar ataxia after a fever and eventually a characteristic set of symptoms including the following [Rosewich et al 2017]:
Cerebellar ataxia
Areflexia
Pes cavus (not present in all affected individuals)
Progressive optic atrophy
Progressive sensorineural hearing loss
In addition to ataxia, symptoms during the acute febrile encephalopathy may include hypotonia, flaccidity, nystagmus, strabismus, dysarthria, anarthria, lethargy, loss of consciousness, and even coma. There is usually considerable recovery within days to weeks, but persistence of some ataxia and other symptoms is typical. Additional features seen in one or more affected individuals include abnormal eye movements, dysphagia, autistic traits, brief seizures during acute illness, dystonia, and cognitive dysfunction [Nicolaides et al 1996, Demos et al 2014, Heimer et al 2015, Potic et al 2015, Maas et al 2016, Duat Rodriguez et al 2017].
This condition has been described in nine families and in three individuals who have an apparently de novo pathogenic variant in ATP1A3 [Demos et al 2014, Duat Rodriguez et al 2017]. Onset and progression of optic atrophy and sensorineural hearing loss are not well characterized. While the course and severity of deficits can vary considerably, there appears to be progression over time.
Genotype-Phenotype Correlations
Review of published studies has shown that the same pathogenic variant may lead to different phenotypes (e.g., RDP in one family but AHC in another), suggesting that ATP1A3-related disorders truly represent a continuum of phenotypes [de Carvalho Aguiar et al 2004, Zanotti-Fregonara et al 2008, Heinzen et al 2012, Roubergue et al 2013, Boelman et al 2014, Rosewich et al 2014b, Yang et al 2014, Viollet et al 2015].
AHC. Individuals with AHC and the pathogenic variant p.Glu815Lys may have earlier onset of symptoms and greater motor and cognitive impairment, and more often experience status epilepticus and respiratory paralysis [Sasaki et al 2014b, Yang et al 2014, Panagiotakaki et al 2015, Viollet et al 2015].
Intermediate and atypical phenotypes
Intermediate phenotypes, often with onset in the childhood years, have also been reported in individuals with the following pathogenic variants:
p.Gly358Asp,
p.Arg756His,
p.Gly867Asp,
p.Asp923Asn, and
p.Glu951Lys [
Anselm et al 2009,
Brashear et al 2012b,
Roubergue et al 2013,
Rosewich et al 2014a,
Sasaki et al 2014a,
Panagiotakaki et al 2015,
Pereira et al 2015,
Termsarasab et al 2015,
Jaffer et al 2017].
Childhood-onset schizophrenia with long-standing mild motor delays, selective mutism, and aggression was reported in a child age six years who was heterozygous for the
p.Val129Met variant [
Smedemark-Margulies et al 2016].
One individual with catastrophic infantile-onset epileptic encephalopathy who died at age 16 months had a novel heterozygous
p.Gly358Val variant in
ATP1A3. Another individual with epilepsy, episodic prolonged apnea, postnatal microcephaly, and severe developmental delays had a novel heterozygous
p.Ile363Asn variant in
ATP1A3 [
Paciorkowski et al 2015].
Rapid-adult-onset ataxia with profound dysarthria and progressive cerebellar degeneration was reported in a single individual with a
de novo heterozygous
p.Gly316Ser pathogenic variant [
Sweadner at al 2016].
Approximately 12 individuals with different pathogenic variants in the amino acid residue
p.Arg756 [
Yano et al 2017] have atypical features that may represent a definable phenotype that is distinct from RDP, AHC, and CAPOS:
All affected individuals had an episodic course with fever-induced encephalopathy as a key defining feature. Varying associated motor deficits including hypotonia, paresis, weakness, ataxia, dystonia, and dysphagia were described.
For those with more prominent ataxia, the name "relapsing encephalopathy with cerebellar ataxia" (designated RECA) has been proposed [
Dard et al 2015,
Hully et al 2017].
Those whose primary feature is weakness have been given the designation of FIPWE: fever-induced paroxysmal weakness and encephalopathy [
Yano et al 2017].
Penetrance
RDP. Penetrance is incomplete. The small number of families with RDP studied to date limits the estimate of penetrance; however, several members of the larger reported families have had a heterozygous ATP1A3 pathogenic variant but no symptoms [Kramer et al 1999, de Carvalho Aguiar et al 2004, Brashear et al 2007].
AHC. Penetrance is even more uncertain, as most ATP1A3 pathogenic variants reported to date have occurred de novo.
CAPOS syndrome. There is no evidence of incomplete penetrance in the families/individuals reported to date [Demos et al 2014, Maas et al 2016, Duat Rodriguez et al 2017].
Nomenclature
The nomenclature of all three well-described phenotypes, based on early clinical categorization, is useful for highlighting symptoms that provide a starting point for diagnosis.
Rapid-onset dystonia-parkinsonism (RDP) was first recognized and named by Dobyns et al [1993] in a girl age 15 years with an abrupt onset of dystonia with severe bulbar symptoms and some signs of parkinsonism (postural instability with bradykinesia). Cerebrospinal fluid levels of dopamine metabolites were low; thus, the term "RDP" was used to describe what later came to be known as "DYT12 caused by pathogenic variants in ATP1A3" (DYT12 is also referred to as DYT-ATP1A3; see Dystonia Overview). Because classic signs of Parkinson disease, such as tremor, are unusual in individuals with RDP, the term "parkinsonism" in the designation "RDP" represents a subset of parkinsonian symptoms, and the disorder is classified as combined dystonia (previously called dystonia-plus) [Albanese et al 2013].
Alternating hemiplegia of childhood (AHC) was named for its most striking and diagnostic motor symptom; however, the range of manifestations show it to be a CNS disorder affecting function broadly in various brain circuits, and the disease evolves with age.
Cerebellar ataxia, areflexia, pes cavus, optic atrophy, and sensorineural hearing loss (CAPOS) syndrome was named for a unique cluster of symptoms. It is now recognized to share characteristics with RDP and AHC; however, the fact that to date the same ATP1A3 pathogenic variant has been observed in the nine unrelated families/individuals, some of whom have a de novo pathogenic variant, supports the continued use of the term.
Prevalence
RDP. The prevalence is not known. RDP has been described in individuals and families from the US, Europe, and Asia, and in individuals of African descent [Webb et al 1999, de Carvalho Aguiar et al 2004, Brashear et al 2007, Lee et al 2007, Blanco-Arias et al 2009, Tarsy et al 2010, de Gusmao et al 2016].
AHC. The prevalence has been estimated at 1:1,000,000.
CAPOS syndrome. The prevalence is not known.