MYH7, c.2011C>T, is responsible for congenital scoliosis in a Chinese family

Neuromuscular scoliosis can be caused by muscular or nervous system dysfunction resulting from genetic variants. Variation in <i>MYH7</i> may cause hypertrophic or dilated cardiomyopathy, skeletal myopathies, or a combination of both; however, scoliosis has rarely been reported. We analyzed a Chinese pedigree with two members suffering from scoliosis. Whole-exome sequencing identified a variant (NM_000257.4:c.2011C > T) of <i>MYH7</i> that cosegregated with the scoliosis phenotype. The variant resulted in a change in the evolutionarily conserved amino acid residue 671 from arginine to cystine (p.R671C), which was predicted to disrupt the structure and function of the motor domain of the slow/β-cardiac myosin heavy chain encoded by <i>MYH7</i>. To date, 913 <i>MYH7</i> variants were associated with cardiomyopathy and/or skeletal myopathies according to the Human Gene Mutation Database. However, only 15 cases of scoliosis have been reported. In our case, the c.2011C > T variant caused scoliosis with 100 % penetrance and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy with partial penetrance.