Patient 1 is a girl aged 5 years and 9 months, the first child of a healthy nonconsanguineous couple. Her psychomotor milestones were profoundly delayed, with raising head at 8 months, sitting alone at 1 year old, and still unable to walk by herself at 5 years and 9 months. Poor eye contact, hand clapping, hand wringing and bruxism were observed at 1 year old, followed by deterioration of hand skills. Epileptic attack occurred at 20 months old, and she responded to valproate (VPA), oxcarbazepine (OXC), and topiramate (TPM) combined therapy. Seizure free was achieved at 5.5 years old. EEG demonstrated spike-slow waves at right medial and posterior temporal, with generalization. MRI (1 year old) revealed enlargement of frontal subarachnoid space. Above manifestations led to the diagnosis of typical RTT. However, mutational analysis of MECP2, CDKL5 and FOXG1 was negative. Through this study, a de novo missense MEF2C mutation, c.48C > G, p.Asn16Lys, was identified, which was a novel mutation.
Patient 3 is a female who is currently 4 years 4 months old. She showed some signs of developmental delay, such as lifting her head at the age of 5 months, sitting independently at the age of 9 months, and walking at the age of 2 years; she also did not exhibit any non-verbal communication skills and could not imitate actions or babble. Poor eye contact was observed at the age of 8 months. Hand clapping and hand wringing were observed when she was 1 year 6 months old. She demonstrated purposeful hand use, and at the age of 8 months, she experienced recurrent, febrile or non-febrile, generalized tonic-clonic seizures. She presented with status epilepticus, which later became absence status epilepticus at the age of 3 years 2 months. At this time, she was started on LEV medication but showed no response to it; subsequently, VPA was added to the treatment strategy at the age of 3 years 6 months, and the patient finally achieved a seizure-free status at the age of 4 years. Her EEG tests at the age of 15 months demonstrated sharp-slow synthetical waves at the left central and left parietal-frontal regions. EEG showed generalized sharp-slow waves and MRI findings indicated delayed myelination in the periventricular area at the age of 3 years 2 months ().