Trisomy 12 mosaicism confirmed in multiple organs from a liveborn child

This patient, in whom trisomy 12 mosaicism was confirmed in multiple organs , is the fifth case diagnosed postnatally and the first reported for whom a meiotic origin of the trisomy, maternal meiosis I, was determined, Mosaic aneuploidy was suspected because of pigmentary dysplasia, a frequent but no n-specific finding in chromosomal mosaicism, The severe phenotype of this c hild, who died in infancy with a complex heart malformation, was probably a result of the high percentage of trisomic cells, Cytogenetic and interphas e fluorescent in situ hybridization analyses showed a highly variable distr ibution of aneuploid cells in the nine tissues studied, from none in blood and ovary to 100% in spleen and liver, The trisomy arose meiotically with a pparent post-zygotic loss of one of the chromosomes 12; uniparental disomy for this chromosome in the diploid cell line was excluded, The phenotype of the cases reported in living or liveborn individuals has been extremely va riable, ranging from the present case, in which the child died in infancy w ith multiple malformations and pigmentary dysplasia, to a fortuitous findin g in an adult studied for infertility, The variation in severity is probabl y determined by the proportion and distribution of the trisomic cells, whic h is linked to the timing of the non-disjunctional error. (C) 2000 Wiley-Li ss, Inc.