Abstract
Hereditary glutathione reductase (GR) deficiency was found in only 2 cases when testing more than 15 000 blood samples. We have investigated the blood cells of 2 patients (1a and 1b) in a previously described family suffering from favism and cataract and of a novel patient (2) presenting with severe neonatal jaundice. Red blood cells and leukocytes of the patients in family 1 did not contain any GR activity, and the GR protein was undetectable by Western blotting. Owing to a 2246-bp deletion in the patients' DNA, translated GR is expected to lack almost the complete dimerization domain, which results in unstable and inactive enzyme. The red blood cells from patient 2 did not exhibit GR activity either, but the patient's leukocytes contained some residual activity that correlated with a weak protein expression. Patient 2 was found to be a compound heterozygote, with a premature stop codon on one allele and a substitution of glycine 330, a highly conserved residue in the superfamily of N
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