Prospective Monitoring of Lyso-Gb1 on DBS Sample in Three Children Recognized at Newborn Screening for Gaucher Disease and Untreated

Background: Gaucher disease (GD) is an autosomal recessive lysosomal disease. Extended neonatal screening currently includes GD in several different regions. Decision on when to start enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) upon confirmed diagnosis or upon appearance of first clinical manifestation of the disease remains an unmet need. Methods: We report our preliminary experience in tightly monitoring blood levels of glucosyl-sphingosine (lyso-Gb1), on DBS at birth and then every 4 weeks, in the absence of ERT in three consecutive newborns identified for GD as part of a screening program. Results: Initial lyso-Gb1 values were above cut-off. In two cases, lyso-Gb1 levels showed a reduction during the first 3 months of life and, by month 4, they had reached a value lower than the upper normal value. In the case of the third child, after an initial drop to less than 50% of the initial value, lyso-Gb1 levels remained pretty stable at the following four time-points. At the time of writing, all remain free from any disease manifestation at the age of 20, 11 and 8 months, respectively, with normal physical growth and blood count; therefore, ERT has not been started yet. Conclusions: A specific threshold for lyso-Gb1 value to be considered as associated with non-reversible progression to disease is not yet defined. We hypothesize that a trend toward stable increase of this biomarker, confirmed at repeated evaluation, rather than a single threshold, could be convincing for starting ERT even before clinical manifestation of the disease.