Objective: To detect genetic causes of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).
Methods: Next-generation sequencing was used to detect 6 DMD patients in whom no exonic deletions were detected by multiplex PCR. Sanger sequencing and multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification were used to confirm the results.
Results: One case was found to have deletions of exons 10 and 11, 1 had exons 16 and 17 duplication, 4 cases have 8 point mutations including c.2776C>T, c.5475delA, c.6391_6392delCA, IVS64+1G>A, c.2645A>G, c.5244G>A, c.7728T>C, c.8729A>T, c.8734A>G and c.8810G>A. The former 4 mutations are suspicious pathogenicity, the other 6 mutations are polymorphisms in population. Three novel mutations (IVS64+1G>A, c.6391_6392delCA (p.Q2131NfsX3) and p.Q926X (CAG>TAG) were not reported before.
Conclusion: Next-generation sequencing technology is a useful tool for the detection of deletion, duplication and point mutation, which is valuable for clinical application.