Epilepsy genetics is an emerging field with increasing therapeutic implications resulting from genetic findings. Despite an overall enthusiasm for precision medicine in epilepsy and other disciplines, there remains no consensus on the approach to genetic testing. A recent study by Berg et al demonstrated a relatively similar diagnostic yield of epilepsy next-generation sequencing (NGS) gene panels compared with whole-exome sequencing (27% vs 33%). Although the utility of NGS panels are consistently demonstrated to our knowledge, no study has systematically evaluated the variability in genes tested among clinically available NGS panels. We compared the potential diagnostic yield of commercially available NGS epilepsy panels to detect the genetic findings identified in a recently published cohort of early-life epilepsy.
Dr. Annapurna Poduri [a CURE grantee] and colleagues from Boston Children’s Hospital compared 10 commercially available NGS gene panels from three major vendors (Athena Diagnostics, Ambry Genetics and GeneDx).