Variant analysis of 92 Chinese Han families with hearing loss

BACKGROUND: Hearing loss (HL) is the most frequent sensory deficit in humans, HL has strong genetic heterogeneity. The genetic diagnosis of HL is very important to aid treatment decisions and to provide prognostic information and genetic counseling for the patient’s family. METHODS: We undertook pedigree analysis in 92 Chinese non-syndromic HL patients by targeted next-generation sequencing and Sanger sequencing. RESULTS: Among the 92 HL patients, 18 were assigned a molecular diagnosis with 33 different variants in 14 deafness genes. Eighteen of the variants in 12 deafness genes were novel. Variants in TMC1, CDH23, LOXHD1 and USH2A were each detected in two probands, and variants in POU3F4, OTOA, GPR98, GJB6, TRIOBP, SLC26A4, MYO15A, TNC, STRC and TMPRSS3 were each detected in one proband. CONCLUSION: Our findings expand the spectrum of deafness gene variation, which will inform genetic diagnosis of deafness and add to the theoretical basis for the prevention of deafness.