Current therapies for the Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome (OMIM: 300322) are off-label and experimental, often leading to inconsistent outcomes. We here report the effects of an intrathecal baclofen therapy, carried out at the Scientific Institute Eugenio Medea (Lecco, Italy), on three patients who no longer received benefit from previous therapies. This treatment, as expected, ameliorated the motor sympt...

Lesch-Nyhan syndrome (LNS), a rare inborn error of metabolism, is characterized by self-injurious behavior, which results in partial or total destruction of oral and perioral tissues and/ or fingers. Persistent self-injurious behavior (biting the fingers, hands, lips, and cheeks; banging the head or limbs) is a hallmark of the disease. Prevention of self-mutilation raises significant difficulti...

LABORATORY DATA biochemical markers metabolic defect chromosomal assignment chromosome X localization chromosome Xq localization chromosome Xq27 localization chromosomal disorders chromosomal fragility, instability, breakage chromosome breakage syndromes foetal-amniotic biochemical data hypoxanthine-guanine phpsphoribosyltransferase defect (foetal) gene, structural-functional anomalies gene ana...

Complete hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyl-transferase (HPRT) deficiency in humans results in the Lesch-Nyhan syndrome which is characterized, among other features, by compulsive self-injurious behavior. HPRT-deficient mice generated using mouse embryonic stem cells exhibit none of the behavioral symptoms associated with the Lesch-Nyhan syndrome. Administration of drugs that inhibit adenine p...

We have detected a novel splice variant of the hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyl transferase (HPRT) gene in two human oocytes and four preimplantation embryos from the 4-cell to the 8-cell stage of development. The novel HPRT transcript lacks exons 4, 5 and 6 of the normal HPRT gene. The same parental origin for the two oocytes and two of the preimplantation embryos, in which the alternativel...

Sir, In the 13th century, Jacobus de Voragine described how God punished the murders of St Thomas. The perpetrators were inflicted with a terrible syndrome that included self-injurious behaviour, compulsive–aggressive acts, intellectual deficiency, gout and renal failure. This syndrome is so highly characteristic of Lesch–Nyhan disease that Beck speculated Jacobus must have had first-hand exper...