Aicardi syndrome is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects primarily females. Initially it was characterized by a typical triad of agenesis of the corpus callosum, central chorioretinal lacunae, and infantile spasms. As more affected individuals have been ascertained, it has become clear that not all affected girls have all three features of the classic triad and that other neurologic and systemic defects are common, including other brain malformations, optic nerve abnormalities, other seizure types, intellectual disability of varying severity, and scoliosis.

Microcephaly with or without chorioretinopathy, lymphedema, or impaired intellectual development (MCLMR) is an autosomal dominant disorder that involves an overlapping but variable spectrum of central nervous system and ocular developmental anomalies. Microcephaly ranges from mild to severe and is often associated with mild to moderate developmental delay and a characteristic facial phenotype with upslanting palpebral fissures, broad nose with rounded tip, long philtrum with thin upper lip, prominent chin, and prominent ears. Chorioretinopathy is the most common eye abnormality, but retinal folds, microphthalmia, and myopic and hypermetropic astigmatism have also been reported, and some individuals have no overt ocular phenotype. Congenital lymphedema, when present, is typically confined to the dorsa of the feet, and lymphoscintigraphy reveals the absence of radioactive isotope uptake from the webspaces between the toes (summary by Ostergaard et al., 2012). Robitaille et al. (2014) found that MCLMR includes a broader spectrum of ocular disease, including retinal detachment with avascularity of the peripheral retina, and noted phenotypic overlap with familial exudative vitreoretinopathy (FEVR; see EVR1, 133780). Birtel et al. (2017) observed intrafamilial and intraindividual variability in retinal phenotype, and noted that syndromic manifestations in some patients are too subtle to be detected during a routine ophthalmologic evaluation. Variable expressivity and reduced penetrance have also been observed in some families (Jones et al., 2014; Li et al., 2016). Autosomal recessive forms of microcephaly with chorioretinopathy have been reported (see 251270). See also Mirhosseini-Holmes-Walton syndrome (autosomal recessive microcephaly with pigmentary retinopathy and impaired intellectual development; 268050), which has been mapped to chromosome 8q21.3-q22.1.