Objective: To detect common pathogenic variants associated with congenital deafness among neonates from Huizhou and surrounding areas and discuss its implications.
Methods: Thirteen hot-spot mutations in four most common pathogenic genes were screened among 20 934 neonates from March 2017 to December 2019.
Results: In total 760 neonates were found to carry common pathogenic variants (3.63%). Sixty two neonates have carried homozygous/compound heterozygous variants or homoplasmy/heteroplasmy mutations of mtDNA (0.29%). Further analysis of five abnormal cases revealed that 3 of them have carried compound heterozygous mutations of GJB2 gene, and 2 were due to compound heterozygous variants of the CDH23 gene.
Conclusion: Genetic testing has a great clinical significance for the prevention and reduction of congenital hearing loss, but the scope needs to be updated and redefined by removing mutation sites with a very low rate, adding new significant sites, and improvement of the technical strategies.