Juvenile polyposis diagnosed with an integrated histological, immunohistochemical and molecular approach identifying new SMAD4 pathogenic variants

Juvenile polyposis (JP) is a rare familial syndrome characterized by the development of numerous hamartomatous polyps of the gastrointestinal tract and by an increased risk of developing gastrointestinal cancers. It follows a pattern of autosomal dominant inheritance and is associated with germline variants of SMAD4 or BMPR1A genes. Differential diagnosis may be difficult based on histology alone, due to morphological similarities to other familial syndromes. Here we report a case of familial JP diagnosed in a 50-years woman with a familial history positive for gastrointestinal cancers and other tumor types. The patient presented with severe iron deficiency anemia and showed numerous polyps in the stomach and jejunum according to endoscopy and imaging. She underwent an intra-gastric laparoscopic removal of the major gastric polyp, followed by jejunal exploration and resection of a segment with multiple neoformations. Histological examination revealed the presence of hamartomatous polyposis. Gastric and intestinal samples were analyzed with next-generation sequencing. Molecular analysis showed that the patient harbored a germline splicing site variant of SMAD4, c.1139 + 3A > G, which was complemented by different somatic variants of the same gene in the different polyps. Immunohistochemistry for SMAD4 confirmed loss of protein expression in the polyps, with regular expression in normal cells. cDNA sequencing further confirmed the findings. We thus definitively diagnosed the woman as having JP thanks to an integrated approach based on histology, immunohistochemistry and molecular analysis. The identified variants, all previously reported as variants of unknown significance, were classified as pathogenic as they complemented each other leading to SMAD4 loss.