Detection of a rare de novo 18p terminal deletion with inverted duplication in a Chinese pregnant woman

Background The 18p terminal deletion with inverted duplication is an extremely rare chromosome structure abnormality and the common clinical manifestations include intellectual disability and speech delay, etc. Up to now, only three confirmed cases were reported in Europe, and here, for the first time in the Asian population, we report a case of de novo 18p inv-dup-del in a Chinese pregnant woman. This structural variation was accidentally discovered by the noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) during her prenatal examination. Methods Next generation sequencing (NGS) based copy number variations (CNVs) screening and karyotype analysis were performed to verify the type and heredity of the rearrangement, and the fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) analysis was also used to confirm the terminal deletion and inverted duplication. Results The patient has a de novo 18p11.31-18p11.1 inverted duplication with a 6.2 Mb 18p terminal deletion. This rare chromosome imbalance, most likely caused by the U-type exchange mechanism, resulted in the aberrant phenotype of mental disability, speech delay, seizure, and strabismus. However, the rearrangement was not inherited by her unborn child. Conclusion This report added a new type of variation to the spectrum of 18p terminal deletion with inverted duplication, and demonstrated that the maternal chromosome rearrangement discovered in NIPT should not just be consider as an interference factor but also a potential indicator of previously undiscovered pathogenic chromosome structure variations in pregnant women.