AUTHOR=Tang Xiangrong , Liu Lihua , Liang Sulan , Liang Meie , Liao Tao , Luo Shiqiang , Yan Tizhen , Chen Jianping 

TITLE=Concurrent Newborn Hearing and Genetic Screening in a Multi-Ethnic Population in South China

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Pediatrics

VOLUME=9

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/pediatrics/articles/10.3389/fped.2021.734300

DOI=10.3389/fped.2021.734300

ISSN=2296-2360

ABSTRACT=<p>Hearing loss is a common sensory deficit in humans with intricate genomic landscape and mutational signature. Approximately 1–3 out of 1,000 newborns have hearing loss and up to 60% of these cases have a genetic etiology. In this study, we conducted the concurrent newborn hearing and genetic screening in 20 mutations (18 pathogenic variants in <italic>GJB2, SLC26A4</italic>, and <italic>MT-RNR1</italic> and 2 uncertain clinical significance variants in <italic>GJB3</italic>) for 9,506 normal newborns (4,977 [52.4%] males) from 22 ethnic population in South China. A total of 1,079 (11.4%) newborns failed to pass the initial hearing screening; 160 (1.7%) infants failed to pass the re-screening, and 135 (1.4%) infants presented the diagnostic hearing loss. For the genetic screening, 220 (2.3%) newborns who presented at least one of the screened mutations were more likely to fail the hearing screening and have diagnostic hearing loss than mutation-negative newborns. In comparison to the differences of distribution of mutations, we did not identify any significant difference in the prevalence of screened mutations between Han group (<italic>n</italic> = 5,265) and Zhuang group (<italic>n</italic> = 3,464), despite the lack of number of minority ethnic groups. Studies including larger number of minority ethnic populations are needed in the future.</p>