A rare de novo interstitial duplication of 15q15.3q21.2 in a boy with severe short stature, hypogonadism, global developmental delay and intellectual disability

BACKGROUND: Interstitial duplications distal to 15q13 are very rare. CASE PRESENTATION: Here, we reported a 14-year-old boy with severe short stature, delayed bone age, hypogonadism, global developmental delay and intellectual disability. His had distinctive facial features including macrocephaly, broad forehead, deep-set and widely spaced eyes, broad nose bridge, shallow philtrum and thick lips. A de novo 6.4 Mb interstitial duplication of 15q15.3q21.2 was detected by chromosomal microarray analysis. We compared our patient’s clinical phenotypes with those of several individuals with overlapping duplications and several candidate genes responsible for the phenotypes were identified as well. CONCLUSION: The results suggest a novel contiguous gene duplication syndrome characterized with shared features including short stature, hypogonadism, global developmental delay and other congenital anomalies. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13039-016-0214-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.