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. 2012 Feb 24;135(3):765–783. doi: 10.1093/brain/aws004

Table 5.

Salient features of c9FTD/ALS due to the GGGGCC hexapeptide repeat expansion in C9ORF72

Demographic
  • Males and females appear approximately equally affected

  • Age of onset is between 33 and 72 years, with most presenting in the 40–70 year age range

  • Survival is variable but typically in the 3–10 year range

  • Survival is shorter when the ALS phenotype is present

Inheritance
  • Inheritance is autosomal dominant

  • Some examples of incomplete penetrance do exist

  • Apparently sporadic cases do exist

  • Some kindreds appear to exhibit an anticipation-like phenomenon

Clinical
  • The characteristic phenotypes include behavioural variant FTD, ALS or FTD/ALS

  • Many with the behavioural variant FTD predominant phenotype have evidence of upper and/or lower motor neuron involvement

  • Some with the ALS predominant phenotype have features of behavioural variant FTD

  • The primary progressive aphasia and corticobasal syndrome phenotypes appear to be uncommonly associated with this mutation

  • Psychosis and appetite/eating changes are common

  • Parkinsonism is common and typically of the akinetic-rigid type without tremor

Neuropsychological
  • Most cases have impairment on measures of complex attention/executive functioning and verbal fluency

  • Performance in other domains is more variable, with most having more minimal or no impairment on measures of episodic memory, confrontation naming and visuospatial functioning

Neuroimaging
  • On MRI, most cases have symmetric bilateral frontal ± temporal cortical atrophy; remarkably minimal atrophy can be apparent early in the course

  • On SPECT or PET, most cases have symmetric bilateral frontal ± temporal cortical abnormalities, with the anteromedial cingulate region being most consistently affected

Neuropathology
  • All cases have TDP-43 positive pathology, with some having features most consistent with harmonized type A FTLD-TDP pathology and others having features most consistent with type B pathology.

  • Ubiquitin-positive neuronal inclusions are very common in the cerebellar granule cells.

  • Motor neuron degeneration and substantia nigra degeneration are common.

  • Hippocampal sclerosis is uncommon or less severe in cases with motor neuron disease

SPECT = single photon emission computed tomography.