Screening for organic acidurias and aminoacidopathies in high-risk Brazilian patients: Eleven-year experience of a reference center

Organic acidurias and aminoacidopathies are groups of frequent inborn errors of metabolism (IEMs), which are caused by mutations in specific genes that lead to loss of protein/enzyme or transport function with important deleterious effects to cell metabolism. Since a considerable number of such disorders are potentially treatable when diagnosed at an early stage of life, diagnosis is crucial for the patients. In the present report, we describe symptomatic individuals referred to our service that were diagnosed with these disorders from 2006 to 2016. We used blood and urine samples from 21,800 patients suspected of aminoacidopathies or organic acidemias that were processed by the analytical techniques reverse phase high-performance liquid chromatography for amino acid quantification and gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry for organic acid detection. Analysis of dried blood spots by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry was used in some cases. We detected 258 cases of organic acidurias, and 117 patients with aminoacidopathies were diagnosed. Once diagnosis was performed, patients were promptly submitted to the available treatments with clear reduction of mortality and morbidity. The obtained data may help pediatricians and metabolic geneticists to become aware of these diseases and possibly expand newborn screening programs in the future.