Clinical and Genetic Characterization of Patients with Artemis Deficiency in Japan.

Purpose: Artemis is an exonuclease essential for V(D)J recombination and repair of DNA double-stranded breaks. Pathogenic variants in DCLRE1C encoding Artemis cause TBNK severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), and patients with Artemis-deficient SCID (ART-SCID) require definitive therapy with allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). Here we describe the clinical and genetic characteristics of patients with ART-SCID who were diagnosed in Japan from 2003 to 2022.

Methods: Clinical data of ART-SCID patients who were diagnosed between 2003 and 2022 in Japan were collected from their physicians using a questionnaire.

Results: ART-SCID diagnosis was made in eight patients from seven families with severe infections within 6 months of life. Two patients had missense variants, five patients had large genomic deletions, and one patient was compound heterozygous for a missense variant and large genomic deletion. All eight underwent allogeneic HCT within 4 months after the diagnosis, 7 receiving a conditioning regimen containing alkylating agents, and one patient without conditioning due to uncontrolled infection. Two patients with poor performance status (PS) died of complications 410 days and 32 days post-HCT, respectively. Of the six surviving patients with a median follow-up time of 8.3 (0.5-17.9) years, three patients had growth retardation. The patients with PS of 0-2 showed a tendency for better overall survival than those with PS 3-4.

Conclusion: Large deletions were the most common genetic cause of ART-SCID in Japan. To improve HCT outcome, early diagnosis with newborn screening for SCID is urgently needed.