Latest / Pediatrics Now: Cases Updates and Discussions for the Busy Pediatric Practitioner / Genetics for the Pediatrician(Grand Rounds Episode for MOC credit)
Transcript
- 0:00I'm Holly Wayment, and this is Pediatrics Now, cases, updates,
- 0:04and discussions for the busy pediatric practitioner.
- 0:07Today, I'm bringing you this fascinating talk from Grand Rounds.
- 0:12This episode is eligible for MOC credit. Let's listen in.
- 0:17Music.
- 0:23So today, we're going to talk about genetics for the pediatrician.
- 0:28I would love for this to be interactive.
- 0:31I know it's Zoom. I wish I were there in the room with you. The goal is really
- 0:34to make this fun and interactive and simple.
- 0:38And the reason I have our zebras is we all cave into stereotypes.
- 0:42All geneticists come with their zebras. But in medicine, we talk about a lot,
- 0:48if you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.
- 0:52And geneticists, of course, like to showcase their zebras.
- 0:55But my main point is, You, as pediatricians, can see the difference between a horse and a zebra.
- 1:04And a rare disease doesn't mean it's mysterious.
- 1:07It just means that you have to have seen it before to know what it is and to
- 1:13know the signs and symptoms associated with it.
- 1:16And you can really make these diagnoses. disease.
- 1:20So I don't have any disclosures and all of these cases are true cases,
- 1:26but I did change the pictures for most of them just so to protect patient confidentialities
- 1:33and minor, minor case details.
- 1:36We're going to do some simple things. We're going to correctly identify top
- 1:41scenarios, those top genetics consults that I see in my daily clinics.
- 1:46We're going to understand basic categories of genetic disorders and tests.
- 1:51And the way we're going to do that is we're going to know our genetics history.
- 1:56It makes it so much easier to categorize these disorders as what category are
- 2:04we in and what decade could I have diagnosed this if I were practicing?
- 2:08When did genetics even start? When could you become a geneticist?
- 2:12So by understanding the history and the decade where testing became available,
- 2:17we'll in turn understand the broad genetic categories and how we place our patients
- 2:23we see in clinic into those categories in order to know what to test when.
- 2:29And we're going to also consider briefly the risk versus the benefits of genetic
- 2:35testing so that we're not overwhelmed by these tests.
- 2:39And we can really focus on what all of you do best, which is engaging,
- 2:43interacting, and seeing your beautiful patient.
- 2:46So it's going to be a rapid approach, but you don't have to remember the details.
- 2:50It's more the philosophy that.
- 2:54I've learned by being with these patients for almost 20 years.
- 2:59So we're going to get objective one over with really fast.
- 3:03What are some of the top 10 genetic consults that I see in my general genetics clinic?
- 3:08I also do craniofacial vascular clinics as well. It's a lot of fun.
- 3:13But in my general bread and butter genetics clinic, I see a lot of autism.
- 3:18I see some patients with epilepsy, multiple congenital anomalies.
- 3:22My mentor used to tell me a rule of threes, three differences,
- 3:27such as a congenital heart disease, short stature, features that are different from the family.
- 3:33And now we're thinking maybe there is a genetic condition that ties the pieces of the puzzle together.
- 3:39Those neurocutaneous disorders, neurofibromatosis, tuberous sclerosis,
- 3:44those patients with sensory neural hearing loss, our connective tissue disorders.
- 3:50Does this patient have Marfan syndrome?
- 3:52We get a lot of referrals for Erlos-Danlos, but good news, you can't make that
- 3:57diagnosis unless somebody is post-puberty nowadays.
- 4:01They've changed the criteria so we can really focus on our patients in a new, different way.
- 4:08Skeletal dysplasia, movement disorders, newborn screening, metabolic disorders.
- 4:12These are kind of our top 10 categories where you think of referring to a geneticist.
- 4:17And most of the time, the patients I'm interacting with in clinic.
- 4:21And we also, throughout this lecture, objective number two, we're really going
- 4:28to think in terms of these broad genetic categories.
- 4:32This is the slide I'm going to focus on for actually a couple of minutes and
- 4:36kind of the work portion of this lecture, because it's so important to understand
- 4:42the categories, but to really memorize those categories.
- 4:45Were next to me to go through kind of genetics by the decade and put the categories
- 4:50in context with the history.
- 4:53But before I launch into the categories, I want to tell you a brief personal anecdote.
- 4:59So when I first became a genetics attending and I got a new job,
- 5:03my lovely, beautiful boss was so excited by my arrival and the extra help that
- 5:09she immediately went to a conference and then vacation.
- 5:14So I saw this baby who had microalpthalmia, deep set eyes, post-axial polydactyly.
- 5:24And I sat there and I wrote the most beautiful note.
- 5:27And I said, there was a differential and it included Smith-Lemley-Opeth syndrome and Joubert syndrome.
- 5:33And I had a long lift. And then she came back, took one look at the baby and said, I'm dead.
- 5:40You didn't send a karyotype for trisomy 13. This baby has trisomy 13.
- 5:45And I thought, am I going to be fired today? Because I had never seen a baby
- 5:50with trisomy 13 in my fellowship that didn't have a cleft palate or holoprosencephaly,
- 5:56but she did fire me. She was lovely.
- 5:59And then had me follow up with the patient where I told the patient,
- 6:04you're having a lot of apnea.
- 6:05I was was concerned because so many patients with trisomy 13 passed away,
- 6:10but that patient, here I was wrong again, that patient was one of the 10% long-term survivors.
- 6:18And that patient happened, the mother happened to take her to the playground
- 6:22where my children played for the next six years that I lived in Rhode Island.
- 6:27And it taught me, we became quite unfriendly terms,
- 6:31but I've always remember two things from that encounter that the first thing
- 6:36I want to do when I get to the bedside is I don't want to miss a major chromosomal category.
- 6:42There are only five reasons we still send chromosomes for big disorders.
- 6:47Trisomy 21, 18, 13, Turner, Klinefelter.
- 6:52And we also send in mothers with recurrent miscarriages since they might have
- 6:56a balanced translocation.
- 6:58And otherwise, we rarely send our chromosomes, but I will never miss a trisomy
- 7:0313 or major chromosomal abnormality again.
- 7:07And I also learned how little I know about prognosis and to remember those 10%
- 7:13of long-term survivors, even with complicated things like trisomy 13 and 18.
- 7:19So none of my fellows or residents missed that category.
- 7:23We start with And then we have the microdeletion duplication syndromes where
- 7:28you're not missing a whole chromosome, but you're missing a small piece of chromosome,
- 7:34maybe containing about 20, 23 genes.
- 7:37It could be missing, it could be doubled. And those are your classic microdeletion
- 7:42pediatric board syndromes.
- 7:44You all know 22q11 deletion syndrome, Williams, Smith-Beginnis,
- 7:48where they have the behavioral problems and trouble sleeping,
- 7:51Kredischat, Wolf-Hirschhorn.
- 7:53And now, of course, you have hundreds and hundreds of micro deletion duplication
- 8:00syndromes. And you can go on rarechromo.org if there's a new one you haven't heard of.
- 8:06But your main idea is that it's groups of genes missing or added.
- 8:10So you really will be seeing...
- 8:13What we call dysmorphic features are features different than the parents,
- 8:17unless the parent is also affected with the same microdeletion duplication syndrome,
- 8:20which happens all the time.
- 8:21But you'll be seeing differences on their physical exam most of the time when
- 8:26you have a chromosomal microdeletion syndrome.
- 8:29Next, we have our single gene testing category.
- 8:33Again, this slide is kind of the bulk of the work. But if you don't know your
- 8:37categories, you're not going to know where to kind of put a patient. shift.
- 8:41So single gene disorders, this is one gene at a time out of our 20,000 genes.
- 8:48A patient comes and they have very tall stature and they have a pectus and they
- 8:55have aortic dilation and they have a positive wrist sign and a thumb sign.
- 9:02And you're thinking they might have Marfan syndrome, a change in just one fibrillin
- 9:07gene out of the 20,000, like 90% of people who meet that Gantt score calculator do.
- 9:13This is a single gene disorder.
- 9:16Next, we have our repeat disorders. That is where, and there are only about
- 9:21five of them for you all to remember for all of your boards,
- 9:25but that is where, for example, you have a child with intellectual disability
- 9:31and that child has a long face and you start thinking about fragile X and they
- 9:40have CGG repeats greater than 200,
- 9:43which affects the FMR1 gene and causes differences in brain development.
- 9:49And you only have to know about five repeat disorders.
- 9:53Then we have our next generation sequencing, where instead of testing one gene
- 10:00at a time, like for epilepsy, we test based on their presentation.
- 10:06So we'll put 100 genes for epilepsy, and we'll sequence all 100 at the same time.
- 10:14Next, we have our methylation disorder category, where you have the same sequence
- 10:20of DNA, but there's a change in expression, such as Angelman syndrome,
- 10:25Prader-Willi syndrome, Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome,
- 10:28Russell-Silver syndrome, some types of diabetes.
- 10:31There aren't that many of those either. there.
- 10:34Next, we have our exome where we're going through all the 20,000 genes,
- 10:40those exiting portions, and we're closely analyzing those exons that might fit
- 10:47into the clinical phenotype that we write down for those labs because they really
- 10:53can't focus on everything.
- 10:54They're going to to analyze better the exons where there might be a clinical disorder.
- 11:00And now we have genome as well, where it's like the exome plus the microarray. But guess what?
- 11:08Many genomes do not pick up some of the repeat disorders and some of the methylation disorders.
- 11:13So genome does not mean that you've done every genetic test.
- 11:17So I know that's a very kind of hard slide, and I've talked a mile a minute,
- 11:23but we're going to break this slide down and think in terms of categories,
- 11:27which makes it a lot more fun and easy to remember.
- 11:30So, if you think about the expansion of genetics over the last decade,
- 11:38which is projected to continue, it really can be very overwhelming.
- 11:43Which category am I in? What test do I order? Do I just genome everybody?
- 11:48And by, again, looking at the history, we can make it less overwhelming and
- 11:54we can think in context of the decades and how we can still be with our patients.
- 12:01So I know there's this idea that Texans have a lot of pride.
- 12:06I don't know if that's true or not.
- 12:08I've only been to Texas twice, but I know you know that you became a state in in 1845.
- 12:15And so does anybody know when Hawaii and Alaska became a state and why that's
- 12:21important, why that was a very important year for geneticists?
- 12:25They became a state in 1959.
- 12:30And the 1950s were a very exciting year for geneticists because before the 1950s,
- 12:36you could be a cardiologist, you could be a pediatrician, but you couldn't be a geneticist.
- 12:42In 1953, that's when Watson and Crick resolved the DNA structure of the double helix. There they are.
- 12:49In 1956, Tiho and Levin discovered that human cells contain 46 chromosomes.
- 12:56And then Lejeune in Paris in 1959 discovered that patients with Down syndrome had trisomy 21,
- 13:05the same year Alaska and Hawaii became states that I'm sure all of you have,
- 13:10many of you have traveled to and enjoy.
- 13:12And so here we are with our chromosomes, three copies.
- 13:17They had trisomy 21. Unfortunately, in the 1950s, many of these patients were
- 13:23institutionalized and marginalized.
- 13:27However, now we know with great loving care, these kids are such a joy and can
- 13:34grow up doing all sorts of things.
- 13:36And it's a lot of fun to interact in my daily clinics with many of the kids
- 13:40that have Abdown syndrome.
- 13:42So in the 1950s, you can see the ads about starting soda early.
- 13:48They say how soon is too soon and that drinking the soda can help you fit in.
- 13:53So hopefully we've learned a lot in the 1950s and we're no longer giving our
- 13:58babies the same baby bottles full of, you know, these soda drinks,
- 14:04although we are giving them our smartphones now and I'm not sure what's better
- 14:08or worse for brain development.
- 14:09But in the 1950s, we could start diagnosing trisomy 21, 18, 13,
- 14:16Klinefelter and Turner syndrome. And that was about it.
- 14:19And through the 1960s, the techniques with banding became more elaborate.
- 14:25And maybe all these kids that were growing up on all the candy,
- 14:29one can argue that they pursued some other things in the 1970s.
- 14:33But regardless, meanwhile, here was Singer sequencing DNA in the 1970s for the first time.
- 14:41And then genomics began to amplify in the 1980s.
- 14:46And you started to be able to discover by the end of the 1980s,
- 14:50Francis Collins, there he is shaking somebody's Craig Ventures hand,
- 14:55but he was kind of the rock hero of genetics.
- 14:59And he actually plays genetic songs that everybody wants to go on YouTube.
- 15:03He plays the guitar. He's sort of the rock star of our field because he was
- 15:08the one in combination with Dr.
- 15:10Chi that sequenced one of the biggest genes, the CFTR gene.
- 15:15So remember when you were growing up or some of us, a lot of you are younger
- 15:19than I am, but you were growing up with your speaking spells and your cabbage touch kids in the 1980s.
- 15:24And this was happening at the same time, because if you could sequence the largest
- 15:29gene, that means you could sequence all the genes.
- 15:32So before Before late 1980s, early 1990s, you could not verify a diagnosis of
- 15:39Marfan syndrome. It was all clinical.
- 15:43And then in the 1990s, not that much happened with testing except,
- 15:49remember the fish probes, is anybody as old as I am, where you could start to fish,
- 15:56meaning that if you had a group Proof of genes missing, you could design a fluorescent
- 16:00probe for something like 22q11 deletion syndrome,
- 16:05Wolff-Hirschhorn, Creedish, Schatz, Smith-McGinnis, Williams,
- 16:08and you could go after that one condition.
- 16:11And just to break it up, because I know it's early in the mornings.
- 16:22That was the top song in 1990
- 16:25rock set when all this fish stuff was happening just to bring you kind of back
- 16:30and wake you up in the morning but at that point i when i started training as
- 16:37a fellow i was so happy i was the tourist trap version of genetics because they
- 16:42were so academic They got to spend an hour with the patients.
- 16:45They could only order chromosomes and fish. Can you imagine?
- 16:50That was so much fun. So as the decades went forward, we got the Human Genome Project.
- 16:59And here, if you remember, and this is not political, this is just about history,
- 17:06but here's Clinton with Francis Collins and Craig Venture.
- 17:11Francis Collins led the public effort for the sequencing of the Human Genome Project.
- 17:16And many of you might remember that Craig Venture featured in all these Time magazines of the year.
- 17:22He led the private effort, but then he ended up making that private information
- 17:26public to kind of validate the public genome.
- 17:30And by the year 2000, there was the first rough draft where,
- 17:34again, if you could sequence one gene, you can sequence all the genes.
- 17:39And now we could start testing for those single gene disorders.
- 17:43And, well, the year 2000, and let me just tell you what the top song was then.
- 17:57Were any of you Faith Hill fans, that was the top song in the year 2000.
- 18:02And while that was happening, something very interesting happened.
- 18:08These genome companies started popping up. And I had a very good friend, mentor.
- 18:14She was a lab director at Einstein, really good clinician. and her best friend
- 18:20went to work for one of these genetic companies.
- 18:24And they were kind of in their heyday. They were offering very expensive tests.
- 18:30And so her friend got the, you know, million dollar mansion.
- 18:35And I remember thinking, that's not why I went into medicine.
- 18:39But I could see that a lot of people were going to these companies and those
- 18:44tests were very expensive.
- 18:46And suddenly suddenly we had a new test, which was the microarray,
- 18:50where patients were getting these tests and figuring out diagnoses that they didn't know they had.
- 18:57And we were learning so much. So we went from only being able to order chromosomes,
- 19:01FISH, and a few single gene disorders like Marfan.
- 19:05We could also do some fragile X testing to suddenly being able to offer this
- 19:10to every child with major intellectual disability, delays, unusual family features,
- 19:18multiple congenital anomalies.
- 19:19And we started making a diagnosis of about 10 to 20% of kids in the year 2000.
- 19:26And so you can see, this is by Dr. Ledbetter et al. He goes through as well.
- 19:32Name your category. In the 1960s, those chromosomal disorders,
- 19:36we get better and better with span techniques.
- 19:39In the 1990s, we start recognizing microdeletion duplication syndromes.
- 19:44And in the year 2000, we start going across the genome for big pieces missing or added.
- 19:52And then something new happens. All these panels start coming out with single
- 19:57gene disorders together.
- 19:58And then Exome only emerged in 2005 or so as a major player.
- 20:06And now they're saying, if you just take somebody with autism,
- 20:09intellectual disability,
- 20:11non-dysmorphic, you have more of a 30 to 40% chance of a diagnosis with Exome
- 20:16versus your 10 to 20% chance with that SNP array looking for pieces missing.
- 20:22Are added. So it's been really interesting to practice with this exome test available.
- 20:29And then of course, in 2010, genome started emerging,
- 20:33but it's really only starting to make its way into clinic right now,
- 20:40where we're deciding, oh, do we order exome, which has a lot more data and analysis in it?
- 20:45Or again, do we order that genome, which includes, it's basically like an exome
- 20:51plus micro deletion and duplications, but it's not perfect either.
- 20:55And it has a lot more variants of unknown significance.
- 20:58So that's the framework where we are now.
- 21:00And as all of this genetic testing expands, we are challenged.
- 21:05And this has been a question since 2010.
- 21:09It was very trendy for people to write articles, genotype first.
- 21:14We just have a newborn screen. We genotype type everybody for everything.
- 21:17But I want to tell you that I truly believe that we all became doctors.
- 21:23We're pediatricians. I'm a geneticist because we like being with our patients.
- 21:28And that is still a skill.
- 21:31And AI isn't going to smile, interact with them, get to know what's special about them.
- 21:38So I would argue it's more fun.
- 21:42It's more interesting. And it's also more medically critically impactful,
- 21:45especially because if you just order all these genetic tests,
- 21:49you're going to get so many variants and you won't be able to explain any of
- 21:53those variants if you haven't been with your patient to get to know them,
- 21:57their natural history and what they have and place that into context with any result you get back.
- 22:04So I want to say, let's continue on as long as we can enjoy the phenotype first model.
- 22:13And then we'll use our genotypes in a smart, very thoughtful way that keeps
- 22:21us engaged with our patients and having fun with them.
- 22:26And so there's a three-step solution for people who would like to continue,
- 22:31as long as we can ride this out, our phenotype first model.
- 22:36We do a detailed clinical analysis.
- 22:40Then we use our resources. You only need two as a pediatrician to be like a geneticist.
- 22:47Go to OMIM and do the clinical synopsis button. That will tell you the features
- 22:52of a particular disorder.
- 22:54And you can also type gene reviews with an S for any disorder.
- 22:58And it'll tell you everything any geneticist knows if you're suspecting a condition.
- 23:03So let's take this beautiful child and let's think with a phenotype-first approach.
- 23:09But there is one problem to it. You have to be there next to the patient.
- 23:14You have to actually do the work as a doctor to have this model,
- 23:19but it will save you so much time of unnecessary testing, and it'll also make life more fun.
- 23:27So let's try it for the patient I just showed you.
- 23:30So in the phenotype first approach, you think what condition might match.
- 23:36You think about the history of their present illness. So this child came and
- 23:41she had a little bit of delay and she has a father who was a little delayed.
- 23:46And when he was younger, he was obsessed with dinosaurs.
- 23:50And she is kind of obsessed with a certain television show and only wants characters from that.
- 23:58And she came in because she was a little bit small for her age.
- 24:02And on physical exam, we noticed the hyper telurism, the wide space nipples,
- 24:07and she was sent to the cardiologist and they had a little bit of pulmonic stenosis.
- 24:13So of course, our clinical conclusion is Noonan syndrome.
- 24:17And we ask ourselves, is genetic testing indicated in the first place? Well, sure.
- 24:23And we are thinking of rasopathies, the most common being PTPN11,
- 24:28which is a single gene autosomal dominant disorder. Of course,
- 24:32we could have de novo people.
- 24:33And so once we've done our clinical analysis, we suspected Noonan syndrome,
- 24:38we sent a single gene, she has Noonan syndrome.
- 24:41And 99% of the time, if we just fill in this box, we can make diagnoses quite
- 24:48easily in genetics, it's really not hard.
- 24:51It just takes the right process.
- 24:54And really, I try to get the fellows and the residents to just fill in the blanks.
- 25:00And I try to do it on every patient, every time myself.
- 25:03So if we think about it, we're going to practice doing this together,
- 25:08because practice every patient, every time makes the right approach.
- 25:13And so we see these lovely ladies and they might have a bit of a wide spaced.
- 25:23Neck. They might've come because of short stature. They may have had swollen
- 25:28hands and feet in particular when they were younger.
- 25:32They're doing well in school most of the time. They may be petite.
- 25:37And so what category are we thinking?
- 25:40We're thinking chromosomal. What decade could we have diagnosed them?
- 25:45We could have diagnosed them in 1960, right?
- 25:49And what test? Our chromosomal test.
- 25:52Please feel free in your chat to make a guess.
- 25:56Now, what about this? These lovely girls, they also have short stature.
- 26:03One of them has a cleft palate.
- 26:05One of them has tetralogy of fallot. They have hypocalcemia.
- 26:10One of them has immune problems. All of you are thinking, what category?
- 26:17Microdeletion duplication disorders. What decade could we have diagnosed them.
- 26:22We could have fished in the 1990s. Today, we send a chromosomal or microarray or snip array.
- 26:28Right? What about this one? What is our category? These patients have a little periorbital edema.
- 26:36They might have kind of loose joints. They may be delayed, but super social and interactive.
- 26:42They'll run in your lap. They might be small for their age.
- 26:47They may have lips that look a little bit thick as they get older and gaps between
- 26:52their teeth. They might have hypercalcemia.
- 26:55And because this is a microdeletion duplication syndrome, we have Williams syndrome.
- 27:01Again, FISH or microarray analysis, again, could have diagnosed them in 1990 or 2000.
- 27:09And with Williams syndrome, it's important, a pearl to remember is that aside
- 27:13from the supravalvular aortic stenosis, renal artery stenosis due to the elastin changes.
- 27:18Please remember to take care of these kids during anesthesia because there can
- 27:22be sudden death. So don't do unnecessary anesthesia with these children.
- 27:26And then what about this condition? Again, you're seeing facial features,
- 27:31the prominent forehead, the hyper telurism that are different.
- 27:35And most of these kids have serious epilepsy and they're diagnosed and nobody
- 27:41reminds them to go to neurology and they come in in status.
- 27:45This is, again, microdeletion or duplication syndrome. Could have diagnosed them in 1990, 2000.
- 27:52We can send either our fish, which nobody ever does, or a micro-erase nip. This is Will Pershorn.
- 27:57And please remember that they really have epilepsy.
- 28:01So be proactive about getting them to a neurologist who's on board with treating
- 28:04them early and aggressively.
- 28:06And then we have these kids. Again, this was, there was an article in the New
- 28:11York Times in around 2004 talking about them.
- 28:14They have small palpebral fissures, a broad flat nose, autism.
- 28:20Because they have more facial features that are different from their parents,
- 28:26they would have been better candidates for microarray.
- 28:29They have 16p11.2 duplication, but microarray testing versus exome approach,
- 28:36which is better for those kids that are kind of non-dysmorphic severe autism.
- 28:42And so I already had mentioned, now we're in a new category.
- 28:46This is a child, we talked about this a little bit earlier.
- 28:51Say that a lot of my patients with connective tissue disorders,
- 28:54instead of the Leonardo da Vinci circle, they're ovals, right?
- 28:59Long, long arms, might have a pectus, might have a high arched palate,
- 29:04may have flat feet with hind foot deformity.
- 29:07This is Marfan fibrillin mutate variant, pathogenic variant.
- 29:12We would have been able to diagnose him by about 1991 or 1992.
- 29:17And this is another patient next who has, again, a single gene disorder, short stature.
- 29:25I'm sure you can recognize that the single gene change in FGFR3 causes over
- 29:32inhibition of the chondrocytes.
- 29:35But what's really exciting about achondroplasia is that there are new treatments
- 29:39that stimulate those chondrocytes.
- 29:44And the two clinical pearls as a pediatrician to remember for achondroplasia
- 29:48is that if they present with sudden vomiting when they're little or severe headaches,
- 29:56they might have compression of the foramen magnum. That's an emergency.
- 29:59And you really want to monitor the head circumferences because some of these
- 30:03kids have hydrocephalus. And again, the third pearl is the treatment.
- 30:08And we would have been able to diagnose, again, her disorder by the 1990s with
- 30:14our single gene testing.
- 30:15And you can still use the same single gene testing in those patients or a small panel.
- 30:20If you think they have Marfan syndrome, you don't have to order an exome.
- 30:24And now here's another patient.
- 30:28And I mentioned this already, but just to drag the point home,
- 30:31so very long face, big ears.
- 30:34The females tend to be very shy.
- 30:37They can have autism too. They tend to have more prominent foreheads, joint hypermobility.
- 30:44In the males, we see the testicular enlargement, but only when they're in puberty.
- 30:48It's not like you're seeing that on a baby.
- 30:51And many times now we're diagnosing this when the mothers in certain states
- 30:56have prenatal screening and are found to be pre-mutation carriers,
- 31:00and then the babies will actually come.
- 31:02But otherwise, it's diagnosed very, very late. And when you diagnose one person,
- 31:06you diagnose a whole family.
- 31:08We're in the category of repeat disorders, fragile X.
- 31:13By the late 1990s, early 2000, we could test for these repeat disorders.
- 31:17Disorders and then now we're
- 31:20into our methylation and
- 31:25so we have these kids these babies the first two that baby is adorable laughing
- 31:32all the time but a horrible sleeper these parents are so tired who come and
- 31:38as the baby gets older doesn't talk might have seizures and the gait in the
- 31:43older children is very ataxic.
- 31:46And so you're thinking about Angelman, which the most best test would be a methylation test.
- 31:54We won't go into the details. And you could also do methylation tests even as
- 31:59early as in limited scenarios, as early as the 1990s, 2000s for certain conditions.
- 32:11And maybe a nevus flammus, maybe you look behind the ears, it railroad tracks,
- 32:16and this is Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome, another disorder where methylation
- 32:21and printing tests would be your category.
- 32:24But now that we've kind of thought about the decades, thought about our genetic
- 32:29categories, in the real world.
- 32:34Things are always a little more complicated. The doctor says,
- 32:38I'm not sure of the cause. I think it could be due to alcohol.
- 32:40And the patient says, that's okay. I'll come back when you're sober.
- 32:45So the idea is that in the real world, we all have these feelings.
- 32:50Many of us, of course, it's not alcohol. It's sleep deprivation.
- 32:54It's too many sources where we are overwhelmed with our EHRs,
- 32:59our pagers, our phones, our our emails, and we have time for everything but thinking.
- 33:05And so we really need to remind everybody, look,
- 33:10we need our time to think, to sit there for five minutes with the patient and
- 33:15forget everything else and do, as I mentioned,
- 33:18that detailed clinical analysis to use our resources and consider where were
- 33:24we in the past with all this testing and what can the future bring to use the
- 33:28best of the past for this patient again.
- 33:32And that is a daily struggle for all of us in practice with this so many paper
- 33:37reality demands of us today.
- 33:39But I encourage everybody and I try to make a commitment to that every day.
- 33:44I'm going to, just like I take time to eat or answer emails,
- 33:49I'm going to take at least five minutes with this patient and sit there and
- 33:52think. And I try to tell the fellows.
- 33:55So this was a 12-year-old. Previously, this is a true story,
- 34:00my patient, previously healthy boy who presented with increased clumsiness.
- 34:07The dad said he acted drunk sometimes.
- 34:10He had grades and concentration. His handwriting was getting worse.
- 34:14He wrestled as a sport and had some decreased performance and shortness of breath.
- 34:19And the cardiology evaluation showed some question of cardiac hypertrophy.
- 34:25And so the question was, what was the best genetic test? How do we diagnose
- 34:30them? And he went to neuromuscular clinic.
- 34:33And the question is, what would you have done? A neuromuscular panel,
- 34:37an exome, repeat disorder testing, chromosomal microarray, or methylation study?
- 34:43I can't see the chat, but I can tell you what
- 34:46the neuromuscular guess what the neuromuscular specialist did a neuromuscular
- 34:51panel right so it was negative then he came to genetics six months later with
- 34:56worsening symptoms sometimes requiring a walker so what do we do now we do our
- 35:02handy dandy approach we fill out the table.
- 35:07So we do the clinical work. He's had some ataxia, some slurred speech.
- 35:12He was falling while playing lacrosse and also in wrestling.
- 35:15He was 10, previously healthy. The exam showed decreased reflexive and a murmur.
- 35:21His echo, there was that concern about hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
- 35:25People say never to use Google. I disagree.
- 35:28If you know what to Google, what to put in your chat GPT, these things can be useful.
- 35:35And a simple Google search would reveal that there is nothing else that causes
- 35:39ataxia, progressive degeneration, and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy except Friedrich's ataxia.
- 35:46But that's not on a neuromuscular panel. That is a repeat disorder.
- 35:51And that is what he had. So this table, just doing the table,
- 35:56could have prevented six months of an extra diagnostic odyssey.
- 36:00It's an autosomal recessive disorder.
- 36:02Each parent was a carrier. It's on two different alleles. It's Friedreich's
- 36:06ataxia. And time is of the essence.
- 36:09So you want to do the tables and the right testing because now there's a new
- 36:14FDA-approved treatment that we are getting him on, which is an activator of nuclear factor.
- 36:21So the excitement of the Genome Project is all these new treatments.
- 36:25But if you miscategorize them and do the wrong thing, you waste time.
- 36:30And that is time away from treatment. So now, case two, to test or not to test.
- 36:39So because of my work in the Ray Helfer Society, it's a nonprofit for child
- 36:43protection, it's academic, and that's a whole saga in my life.
- 36:46But because of it, I do always like to present the other side of cases where
- 36:51we might think about, do we need to test this baby with genetic testing?
- 36:56So we have a two-month baby, also a true case of mine, reported apnea.
- 37:02Parents report previous difficult feeding and colic, otherwise healthy.
- 37:06Parents are first cousins.
- 37:08Ophthalmological exam reveals bilateral retinal hemorrhages diffusely located.
- 37:13The imaging shows subdural hematoma, many rib fractures, and the parents are
- 37:19described as very caring and nice by the bedside.
- 37:23So he's not supporting the head while on exam.
- 37:26We don't see bruising. There's hypotonia. The head is on the large side,
- 37:32and the pediatric resident who does take a history said, oh,
- 37:35oh, there's consanguinity.
- 37:37Consanguinity says this must be metabolic. And when you re-go take the history,
- 37:42the parents say, oh, maybe there was a little delay in motor skills.
- 37:46This is a tiny baby. Maybe he wasn't rolling over that well.
- 37:49He wasn't smiling that much.
- 37:52And so what do you do next? Do you follow up on the newborn screen results?
- 37:57Do you send metabolic testing, including something called a urine for C5DC.
- 38:04I'll explain what that is. Do you do a personalized sequencing panel for every metabolic disorder?
- 38:10Do you do exome testing or do you do genome testing?
- 38:15So the disorder that the resident was rightfully concerned about was glutaric acidemia type 1.
- 38:22It has an incidence of 1 in 30,000. This family was not Amish,
- 38:26by the way, where the incidence is higher.
- 38:28And it often presents with dystonia after viral illnesses.
- 38:33In this disorder, we see retinal hemorrhages in the posterior pole, not diffuse. use.
- 38:39And macrocephaly is defined as 98%, but this baby's head circumference is 90%.
- 38:46So it does have a generous head, but so do the parents when you measure their
- 38:50heads and not true macrocephaly.
- 38:53And the MRI in this disorder shows widening of the sylvan fissures,
- 38:58expansion of the CSF spaces, but this baby's MRI only shows the subdural, no other issues.
- 39:05So actually in doing the deep probe, This child's findings do not match glutaric acidemia type 1 at all.
- 39:17The retinal hemorrhages are different
- 39:19once you compare in your clinical synopsis and your gene reviews.
- 39:23The MRI findings are different.
- 39:27And in glutaric acidemia, babies don't fracture. So unfortunately,
- 39:32the multidisciplinary team believes that this is child abuse.
- 39:38But we send the testing, and the testing shows in glutaric acidemia,
- 39:44almost 100% of patients, even the low excretors, have abnormal elevated C5DC.
- 39:53And in this patient, that lab comes back normal, ruling out biochemically glutaric
- 40:00acidemia, and it is repeated three times.
- 40:03So should genetic testing be indicated in the first place?
- 40:07If you're going to do the genetic testing and variants return,
- 40:10that might be difficult to interpret.
- 40:13And there is when there's yet another handy dandy table.
- 40:17And I ask people as an exercise, let's think about the benefits versus the risks
- 40:22of genetic testing if we're testing for disorders where we have clinically and
- 40:27biochemically, for example, no suspicion whatsoever.
- 40:32And so on the one hand, if there's a diagnosis present, that's wonderful.
- 40:37Fault. That's knowledge.
- 40:38But on the other hand, if there's a misdiagnosis based on a variant or confusion,
- 40:43that can cause a lot of anxiety.
- 40:46And it can cause us to focus on the wrong things.
- 40:51If there's a real diagnosis, there's potential for early and improved treatment. That's wonderful.
- 40:56But if there's misdiagnosis, we might blame everything on the misdiagnosis.
- 41:01Or if there's a genetic disorder like Down syndrome, we might do diagnostic
- 41:07overshadowing where every single symptom, they have fractures,
- 41:10which we don't see in Down syndrome, but we say it must be their Down syndrome.
- 41:14We don't want to do that either.
- 41:16For relatives, it can give them prenatal risk counseling, but when a diagnosis,
- 41:20a misdiagnosis is believed, there could be fear of sudden catastrophic events,
- 41:26metabolic episodes like dystonia that aren't going to actually happen in this baby.
- 41:30We want the potential to confirm a genetic diagnosis and as an explanation,
- 41:35but on the other hand, we don't wanna use an erroneous diagnosis if it's not true.
- 41:40We wanna advocate for patients using these diagnoses, but if they have a diagnosis
- 41:46that's not real, they may be considered more medically fragile,
- 41:50which could affect their adoption, home placement, future life insurance.
- 41:55Incidental finding can lead to medically actionable plans later in life.
- 42:00But again, if you find a BRCA mutation in a baby, what is the implication or
- 42:05a cardiac arrhythmia gene for their future military service?
- 42:09So we want to provide all of our latest technology and resources,
- 42:14but we also don't want to erroneously deprive vulnerable or any other children
- 42:19of their choices in genetic testing.
- 42:22So it's a hard balance. There's no easy solution, but at least let's think before
- 42:27we reflexively order exome and genome on everybody.
- 42:30So in this particular case, biochemical testing over and over again,
- 42:36the clinical findings ruled out glutaric acidemia, but another colleague before
- 42:42I arrived to this case had ordered an exome.
- 42:45And it came back with a likely pathogenic variant in glutaric acidemia,
- 42:51as well as a variant of unknown significance.
- 42:54So now she said, I was correct. I ordered the exome. I'm very good friends with
- 42:58this colleague, which has had a different of opinion.
- 43:02Then there was a likely pathogenic change in an osteogenesis imperfecta gene.
- 43:07And there was an incidental finding of hereditary hemochromatosis.
- 43:12So what do we do? We have to think about the pretest probability,
- 43:17the database and literature review, the inheritance pattern.
- 43:21We do not have to think so much about paternity and consanguinity,
- 43:25and we have to think about the phasing with these variants.
- 43:29And so what we do is we do a very simple process, just like we do simple clinical work.
- 43:36We do the same thing with variants every time. The biggest thing is our pretest
- 43:41probability, the clinical work that came first.
- 43:44Do we think this is glutaric acidemia?
- 43:46As I've told you, we do not. Then we search our databases like ClinVar,
- 43:52Franklin, Decipher for variants that have been reported.
- 43:56And how likely is this variant to be real? We think about our inheritance pattern.
- 44:01If there is one variant in an autosomal recessive disorder, that is not enough
- 44:05to call it a disorder. You need two.
- 44:08We classified the variants after that using the American College of Medical
- 44:12Genetics guidelines and pathogenic, it really causes it, likely pathogenic,
- 44:18a variant benign or likely benign.
- 44:22So we use that same genetic approach that we used for clinical approaches every
- 44:28single case, we get a variant.
- 44:30So like I said, if you have an autosomal recessive disorder,
- 44:36you need two variants, one on each allele.
- 44:39But if you look at this, there could be a situation where somebody has two variants on the same allele.
- 44:46So one gene is affected, but in autosomal recessive disorders,
- 44:52usually if you have one gene that's working, you don't have the disorder.
- 44:55So you could also be very confused and see two variants and assume the patient has a disease.
- 45:01And unless you've done phasing and you know that the variants are on opposite
- 45:06alleles, they may not have that disease.
- 45:08And so, again, I know all of this seems kind of overwhelming,
- 45:12but that's why we don't want to order genetic tests.
- 45:16And risk variants if we're not ready to do the work when they return.
- 45:20So the true outcome was that the child was a carrier for the disorder,
- 45:25but not affected for GA1.
- 45:27Both of these variants, when the parental testing was done, were found on one allele.
- 45:34Yes, it's a coincidence that the child was a carrier for glutaric acidemia,
- 45:37but the child was unaffected. It came from one parent.
- 45:42The C5DC, like I'm saying, was normal. The serpent app was autosomal recessive,
- 45:49and there was only one variant, and you need two in this rare form of autosomal
- 45:54recessive osteogenesis imperfecta.
- 45:57So the child did not have osteogenesis imperfecta as an explanation for the rib fractures.
- 46:02And the child was affected with hereditary hemochromatosis,
- 46:07a mild form, where later in life, if you're male, you might want to give blood
- 46:11transfusion, donate blood so that your blood does not, your iron is not too
- 46:17high in your liver and so forth, but really didn't cause a problem for this baby.
- 46:21But because of this genetic testing in the civil proceedings,
- 46:25the diagnosis was made of glutaric acidemia type 1, osteogenesis type 6.
- 46:33They said that the hereditary hemochromatosis caused the child's liver injury,
- 46:38which we we believe was unfortunately from abuse and the criminal proceedings
- 46:43were dropped and the child was returned to the home. So again.
- 46:49I have kind of hoped to show you through that kind of sad case that we really
- 46:55want to think before we just reflexively send genetic testing for everybody,
- 47:00because particularly in vulnerable children,
- 47:02genetic testing is not always of benefit.
- 47:06Now on to kind of our last case in the real world.
- 47:10And this is, again, just to practice using our handy dandy tables and systematic process.
- 47:15So, this is a case that I think is a little bit more uplifting than the one
- 47:20I presented a minute ago, where there's an otherwise healthy boy with appropriate
- 47:25development and first evaluated for gait abnormalities at 11.
- 47:29He reportedly always carried his right arm at an abnormal angle when running
- 47:34and increased his gait disturbance over the right side in the preceding two years.
- 47:39And initially, orthopedic evaluation raised concern for a tethered cord,
- 47:44but a neurological concern raised concern for right hemiparesis with a gait
- 47:51characterized by kind of the circumduction of his elbow when walking. It was really unusual.
- 47:58And so we did the clinical work.
- 48:02This was my colleague, Dr. Seth Berger, who did this case. And the child had
- 48:07an atypical gait. It was getting worse over time.
- 48:09Otherwise, a completely unremarkable examination. He was smart, doing well in school.
- 48:15And the clinical conclusion, there wasn't a lot of laboratory data, was we just don't know.
- 48:21And this is where, because exome does have, with these really neuroatypical
- 48:27disorders, a 30% to 40% diagnostic yield, he sent the testing. Okay.
- 48:33And when the testing came back, there were two variants in a gene called GCH1,
- 48:40guanosine triphosphate cyclohydroxylase.
- 48:43And because he had a really good clinical picture of an unusual gait,
- 48:48he went back and looked at those variants.
- 48:50And it turns out that they've been reported with hyperphenylalanemia in some cases.
- 48:55But in rare cases, they don't lead to what we call hyperfi.
- 48:59But rather there's a central tetrahydrobioptrin deficiency, decreasing tyrosine
- 49:06hydroxylase, and that tetrahydrobioptrin deficiency is responsible for dopamine.
- 49:13And when he looked through the literature, even though the lab had classified
- 49:17these variants as variants of uncertain significance, there were two of them.
- 49:21He did parental phasing.
- 49:23It was on opposite alleles, and it fit with the potential clinical.
- 49:28So he did more testing and he hadn't ordered a chromosomal test.
- 49:34This patient didn't have Down syndrome.
- 49:36He didn't look like a microdeletion syndrome. He didn't look like Fragile X or anything.
- 49:40The neuromuscular panel at that point was not gonna be any higher yield than
- 49:44the exome because if you have a differential of more than 25 genes,
- 49:49they're encouraging exome right now.
- 49:50Again, not on everybody, but on cases where you think that something neuroatypical
- 49:55and truly unusual is going on, it might be a reasonable approach.
- 50:01And so this is the outcome of his walk before and after.
- 50:07So you can see that before dopamine treatment, and let me play it again,
- 50:13it's much more of a subtle circular gait and his walk is a a lot better after dopamine treatment.
- 50:21So this is just to show that when you follow a clinical approach,
- 50:27even if you don't know, but you've tried your best to kind of categorize the
- 50:31patient, and then you do order a broader test like Exome because you've carefully
- 50:37thought about its use, its implications, the risks versus benefits,
- 50:41and you get variants of unknown significance back when you've really thought
- 50:46about your clinical, you can then spend some time interpreting those variants
- 50:50and you can make a difference.
- 50:53And about out of all the people that get exomes, maybe three to 5% will come
- 50:57back with something actually treatable, like in this case.
- 51:01And that's why we're really there for these patients to interact,
- 51:05engage, and always think, are we ordering something where we will identify a
- 51:09treatable condition that will have impact?
- 51:16And So just to summarize, let's all encourage a phenotype first approach.
- 51:22It's a lot more fun to engage with these beautiful patients and try to make
- 51:26a guess, even if we fail forward, even if we're wrong.
- 51:31We're really, Dr. Kamat and I were talking about how it's still better to make
- 51:36a guess of your top three because that distinguishes you as a doctor from any
- 51:41other service professional or nurse practitioner,
- 51:45physician assistant, whatever you are that brings so much joy and care for kids.
- 51:50It distinguishes you as an expert in your field.
- 51:53Then after we've named our category, thought about what decade could we have
- 51:57diagnosed them? And if we could have diagnosed them in the 1990s or year 2000s
- 52:02with a more simple test, maybe we should still use that simple test approach.
- 52:07We don't need all these extra layers of variants and a more modern approach.
- 52:12The simple test and solution works and is faster and cheaper.
- 52:17We're going to consider the benefits versus risks of ordering our tests.
- 52:21And we're going to be with our patients. And my daughter, who's about to go
- 52:25to college, was so funny. She does a lot with Best Buddies and Special Olympics.
- 52:30She's considering being a special education teacher.
- 52:33It's kind of cute. And she lectured me the other day and said.
- 52:36Mom, I bet you're not talking directly enough to your nonverbal patients because
- 52:41nonverbal patients can interact and talk too.
- 52:45They may not speak, but they can still engage.
- 52:47So following my daughter's advice, I made extra special care in my clinic last
- 52:52week to really talk to these kids.
- 52:55And it was so rewarding because they did talk back to me in their own ways,
- 53:01whether pointing or engaging.
- 53:03And that was just such a joy. So let's be with our patients and take time to think about them.
- 53:09Every patient will have a lot more fun, despite all the pressures of medicine.
- 53:13And I want to thank Dr. Kamat, who is just such a star and amazing contributor
- 53:18to the pediatric field, and all of you, my colleagues, both in the Rare Disease
- 53:23Institute and Child Protection colleagues.
- 53:25And please come visit us in D.C.
- 53:29Thank you. And I would love to take any questions.
- 53:33Yeah, I'm just...
- 53:35Curious, you mentioned things in your presentation.
- 53:40Anyway, thanks for a wonderful presentation and a joyous one.
- 53:45Where we're having to deal with relatively common tetradogenic events that occur
- 53:53as prenatal exposures but are not genetics.
- 53:56And about the sort of total ecology of running every possible genetic test and the cost of doing that.
- 54:05Financial cost as well as the clinical and emotional cost of doing all of that.
- 54:12When the child was gestated and born in a toxic environment,
- 54:21on the peninsula, organic toxins for agriculture are the most obvious one,
- 54:28which you mentioned, which is prenatal exposure to alcohol.
- 54:31Or maybe it's the mom who's on phenobarb.
- 54:35Feature disorder and how far what
- 54:38exactly how to balance this ecology in terms
- 54:42of resets the time and assets that
- 54:45we have available when we're trying to differentiate between
- 54:48let's say some rare satellite amplification syndrome
- 54:52versus prenatal exposure to alcohol i mean yeah i know a lot of people for example
- 54:58that have done a lot of research really high level research on autism and there's
- 55:04about a third of those kids that have small heads and eventually you start to think.
- 55:11Maybe this is not genetic. Absolutely.
- 55:15And it is a hard balance, but I think what you're getting at,
- 55:20and I completely agree, is that, for example, if you're thinking fetal alcohol
- 55:24syndrome, there is diagnostic criteria.
- 55:27And what I do is I just put the checklist, and then I put this patient has microcephaly,
- 55:34the small help ebrile fissures, the flattening of the bridge,
- 55:38the hockey hockey stick hand.
- 55:40This patient has the neurotypical behaviors.
- 55:43And then I tell the families that it depends on the state, but sometimes having
- 55:48the diagnosis of fetal alcohol syndrome actually helps with services.
- 55:52And sometimes that's enough. And so there are times when it might behoove them
- 55:58to hold off on further testing.
- 56:02And really instead I say to them, I think we could always do genetic testing,
- 56:07but maybe we really want to focus on this diagnosis, the services for this right
- 56:12now, and then see them back, do the developmental evaluation.
- 56:17Get their early intervention and see them back later.
- 56:20And so by really, again, spending time and thinking about what would have the
- 56:26most impact for this child,
- 56:28many families will avoid testing and are quite reasonable when you refocus them
- 56:36and say what the benefit might be of holding off and focusing on something else for a while.
- 56:42And I always tell people, if it is a teratogen, like if it's,
- 56:48I had a baby with a very, very severe cloacal abnormality and many, many other things.
- 56:56And they said, oh, this is maternal diabetes. But the mom really only had one.
- 57:01A little bit of diabetes. It was not enough to explain the severity of the disease.
- 57:05So I do think that when there is a teratogen present that has a known disease,
- 57:12you can also use those clinical, like valproic acetatexase, that you can use
- 57:17those clinical features to try to categorize them.
- 57:20And then your discussion can follow based on how suspicious you are that it's
- 57:25fetal alcohol versus something else.
- 57:27Thank you, Dr. Natasha. There is a question from Dr. Buesgenwald.
- 57:30Can you share your favorite website resource again for looking up syndromes?
- 57:36Yes. So I use two sites. When you go to OMA, which is, you know,
- 57:41free, it's very overwhelming if you do a disorder like Noonan syndrome,
- 57:45but you have to go to the clinical synopsis section, touch clinical synopsis.
- 57:51That gives you all the little things that you want to look for at the bedside.
- 57:54And then the other one is gene reviews with an S. So if you type Noonan syndrome
- 57:59gene reviews, it's going to give you everything a geneticist would tell you.
- 58:03And so, in fact, when I make a diagnosis, I literally pull it up because I like
- 58:08to be systematic and I don't want to forget things.
- 58:10And I just go through and then I cut and paste it into my note half the time.
- 58:14I do the same thing. If there's a variant in somebody for a gene like in a Noonan,
- 58:18I literally take the clinical synopsis and then I paste it and I highlight in
- 58:22bold what the patient has.
- 58:24And if they have the diagnosis, a lot of it is going to be in bold.
- 58:27Otherwise, it's not it, usually.
- 58:30There is a comment by Dr. Williams, very helpful approach, and thank you for
- 58:33reminding us all about the joy and importance of being with the patient.
- 58:38Thank you, Dr. Williams. And there's a question by Dr. Perlman,
- 58:41are methylation disorders and repeat disorders included in current microarray panels?
- 58:48No, they are not. There are rare, so in the SNP array, which has single nucleotide
- 58:54polymorphisms, they They do not always have the methylation included.
- 59:01However, in cases, for example, Angelman or Prader-Willi, where it's because
- 59:06they got two copies from one parent,
- 59:09then you will see the same single nucleotide polymorphisms and you'll think
- 59:14that they have two of the same chromosome.
- 59:17So some of it can inadvertently show it, but not if there's just one methylation
- 59:22difference or something. thing.
- 59:24So that is why on your boards and in real life, if you suspect Angelman,
- 59:28Prader-Willi, Russell-Silver, Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome,
- 59:32certain diabetes things, you really want to go for the methylation test because
- 59:36that will show you every type of methylation abnormality and it won't miss them.
- 59:43But there are some cases of Angelman or Prader-Willi that are caused by microdeletion.
- 59:47There are some cases where you would see uniparental diastomy that SNP can detect,
- 59:51but your highest yield is still the methylation category, methylation test.
- 59:56That's always on your boards.
- 59:58Any other questions, comments for Dr. Schur? This is Ryan Van Ramstorst,
- 1:00:04Chief Medical Director for Medicaid CHIP Services in Texas.
- 1:00:07Dr. Schur, thank you so much. Just a public service announcement for the group.
- 1:00:11Because of legislation from the last legislative session, Senate Bill 989,
- 1:00:16which is what we call the biomarker legislation,
- 1:00:18the draft clinical policy for Texas Medicaid coverage of things such as whole
- 1:00:23genome sequencing will soon be posted to our website for public comment.
- 1:00:28I highly encourage all of you to take a look at that and submit a comment if you're so interested.
- 1:00:33Your comments help us sculpt the policy and make sure it's in line with clinical
- 1:00:39best practice guidelines.
- 1:00:40And so just wanted to make that announcement. We anticipate it's going to be
- 1:00:43posted within the next week or so.
- 1:00:45I'll put a link in the chat to the website where it's going to be posted.
- 1:00:48So just wanted to make that announcement because of this wonderful presentation
- 1:00:51this morning. Thanks, y'all.
- 1:00:53I'm so jealous. I wish that our Medicaid would come to some of of our genetics lectures.
- 1:00:58I'm so jealous of how things are being done in your area.
- 1:01:03That's wonderful that you're working together on this. That's amazing.
- 1:01:07See, we can learn from other states.
- 1:01:11I'm going to tell them that.
- 1:01:16Music.
- 1:01:18Thank you for listening to that
- 1:01:20wonderful talk. Click on the link in this podcast for free credit. it.
- 1:01:25I'm Holly Wayment, and you're listening to Pediatrics Now. I'll see you next time.