| A rare clinical entity including as main characteristics anophthalmia or severe microphthalmia, and pulmonary hypoplasia or aplasia. Only five cases have been reported so far, two of who were siblings. In the three nonfamilial cases, unilateral pulmonary agenesis and microphthalmia were associated with diaphragmatic hernia and pulmonary vessel agenesis. It has been suggested that two different entities can be distinguished: on one hand, the association of anophthalmia-pulmonary hypoplasia with/without anomalies of the face, heart, spleen and uterus, which may be due to a putative autosomal recessive gene with pleiotropic effects; on the other hand, a sporadic association including pulmonary hypoplasia, anophthalmia, unilateral diaphragmatic defect and agenesis of the pulmonary trunk, which may represent the expression of a developmental field defect. There is evidence that syndromic microphthalmia- is caused by homozygous or compound heterozygous mutation in the STRA6 gene on chromosome 15q24. |
