Rapid detection of gene mutations responsible for non-syndromic aortic aneurysm and dissection using two different methods: resequencing microarray technology and next-generation sequencing

Aortic aneurysm and/or dissection (AAD) is a life-threatening condition, and several syndromes are known to be related to AAD. In this study, two new technologies, resequencing array technology (ResAT) and next-generation sequencing (NGS), were used to analyze eight genes associated with syndromic AAD in 70 patients with non-syndromic AAD. Eighteen sequence variants were detected using both ResAT and NGS. In addition one of these sequence variants was detected by ResAT only and two additional variants by NGS only. Three of the 18 variants are likely to be pathogenic (in 4.3% of AAD patients and in 8.6% of a subset of patients with thoracic AAD), highlighting the importance of genetic analysis in non-syndromic AAD. ResAT and NGS similarly detected most, but not all, of the variants. Resequencing array technology was a rapid and efficient method for detecting most nucleotide substitutions, but was unable to detect short insertions/deletions, and it is impractical to update custom arrays frequently. Next-generation sequencing was able to detect almost all types of mutation, but requires improved informatics methods.