Abstract
Charcot‐Marie‐Tooth disease (CMT) is an umbrella term for inherited neuropathies affecting an estimated one in 2,500 people. Over 120 CMT and related genes have been identified and clinical gene panels often contain more than 100 genes. Such a large genomic space will invariantly yield variants of uncertain clinical significance (VUS) in nearly any person tested. This rise in number of VUS creates major challenges for genetic counseling. Additionally, fewer individual variants in known genes are being published as the academic merit is decreasing, and most testing now happens in clinical laboratories, which typically do not correlate their variants with clinical phenotypes. For CMT, we aim to encourage and facilitate the global capture of variant data to gain a large collection of alleles in CMT genes, ideally in conjunction with phenotypic information. The Inherited Neuropathy Variant Browser provides user‐friendly open access to currently reported variation in CMT genes. Geneticists, physicians, and genetic counselors can enter variants detected by clinical tests or in research studies in addition to genetic variation gathered from published literature, which are then submitted to ClinVar biannually. Active participation of the broader CMT community will provide an advance over existing resources for interpretation of CMT genetic variation.
The rise in variants of uncertain significance (VUS) from next‐generation sequencing creates major challenges for clinical action, especially within diseases with high genetic heterogeneity. With pathogenic variants in over 120 genes, Charcot‐Marie‐Tooth disease has yielded an overwhelming amount of VUS. We have created the user‐friendly, open access Inherited Neuropathy Variant Browser for the CMT community to browse, rate, and discuss currently reported variation to aid the field in interpretation of VUS.
