Intergeneration CAG expansion and contraction in a Chinese HD family

The prevalence of juvenile-onset Huntington's disease (HD) is about ten times lower than adult HD. Here we report a Chinese HD family showing both intergeneration CAG expansion and contraction. The expansion resulted from a paternal transmission which leads to juvenile-onset HD for a 17-year-old Chinese boy (III-5). More interestingly, a contraction was noticed in a maternal transmission (III-3), which changed the CAG repeat from an expanded, disease-causing allele (48 repeats) to a normal or intermediate allele (34 repeats). Of note, the contraction resulted in a deletion of 14 CAG repeats, which is much larger than previously reported contractions. Our results are consistent with previous observations in Western Caucasians that juvenile-onset HD is more likely inherited through the male germline.