19p13.2 Microdeletion including NFIX associated with overgrowth and intellectual disability suggestive of Malan syndrome

BACKGROUND: Overgrowth syndromes represent clinically and genetically heterogeneous conditions characterized by a wide spectrum of malformations, tall stature, intellectual disability and/or macrocephaly. RESULTS: In a cohort of four clinically characterized patients with overgrowth syndrome without known causative gene mutation, we performed an Illumina SNP-array analysis to identify the pathogenic copy number variations. We identified two rare copy number variations harboring overgrowth syndrome related genes. Patient 1 was Malan syndrome with a 1.4 Mb 19p13.2-13.13 microdeletion including NFIX, and Patient 2 was identified as Sotos syndrome with a 1.6 Mb 5q35.2 microdeletion encompassing NSD1. CONCLUSIONS: We identified two patients associated with Manlan syndrome and Sotos syndrome respectively. We also discuss the use of the microarrays-based candidate gene strategy in Mendelian disease-gene identification. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13039-016-0282-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.