Affiliation:
1. Department of Urology and General Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Medical University of Plovdiv, 4000 Plovdiv, Bulgaria
2. St Karidad MHAT, Karidad Medical Health Center, 4004 Plovdiv, Bulgaria
Abstract
Tumoral calcinosis is an extremely rare genetic disease caused by mutations in three genes, GALNT3, FGF23, and KL, which disrupt phosphorus metabolism. The hallmark of this condition is the formation of tumors in the soft tissues around the joints. Other phenotypic features of tumoral calcinosis are dental involvement and brain and vascular calcifications. The clinical case reported herein presents for the first time to the scientific community the c.202A>G (p.Thr68Ala) mutation of the FGF23 gene, associated with a hyperphosphatemic variant of tumoral calcinosis and multiple severe vascular aneurysms. A female patient underwent multiple surgeries for tumor formations in her soft tissues that first appeared at the age of 12 months. On this occurrence, the patient was found to have hyperphosphatemia, low phosphate clearance, increased tubular reabsorption with normal levels of total and ionized calcium, vitamin D3, and parathyroid hormone, and no effect of treatment with sevelamer hydrochloride and a low-phosphate diet. At the age of 39, the patient underwent imaging studies due to edema and a pulsating formation in the neck area, which revealed multiple vascular aneurysms with thrombosis, for which she received operative and interventional treatment. In this connection, and because of the established phosphorus metabolism disturbance, a genetic disease was suspected. The sequence analysis and deletion/duplication testing of the 358 genes performed on this occasion revealed that the woman was homozygous for a variant of the c.202A>G (p.Thr68Ala) mutation of the FGF23 gene. The established mutation is not present in population databases. The presented clinical case is the first and only one in the world to demonstrate the role of this type of FGF23 gene mutation in the development of a hyperphosphatemic variant of tumoral calcinosis characterized by aggressive formation of multiple vascular aneurysms.