The incidence of movement disorders increases with age and contrasts with subtle and limited neuroimaging abnormalities in argininosuccinic aciduria.
Argininosuccinate lyase is integral to the urea cycle detoxifying neurotoxic ammonia and the nitric oxide biosynthesis cycle. Inherited argininosuccinate lyase deficiency causes argininosuccinic aciduria (ASA), a rare disease with hyperammonaemia and nitric oxide deficiency. Patients present with developmental delay, epilepsy and movement disorders, associated with nitric oxide-mediated downregulation of central catecholamine biosynthesis. A neurodegenerative phenotype has been proposed in ASA. To better characterise this neurodegenerative phenotype in ASA, we conducted a retrospective study in six paediatric and adult metabolic centres in the UK in 2022. We identified 60 patients and specifically looked for movement disorders-related symptoms: movement disorders such as ataxia, tremor and dystonia, hypotonia and abnormal behaviour. We analysed neuroimaging with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in an ASA patient with movement disorders. We assessed conventional and DTI MRI alongside single photon emission computer tomography (SPECT) with dopamine analogue radionuclide 123I-ioflupane, in Asl-deficient mice treated by hASL mRNA with normalised ureagenesis. Movement disorders in ASA appears in the 2nd and 3rd decades of life, becoming more prevalent with ageing and independent from the age of onset of hyperammonaemia. Neuroimaging can show abnormal DTI features affecting both grey and white matter, preferentially basal ganglia. ASA mouse model with normalised ureagenesis did not recapitulate these DTI findings and showed normal 123I-ioflupane SPECT and cerebral dopamine metabolomics. Altogether these findings support the pathophysiology of a late-onset movement disorders with functional central catecholamine dysregulation but without or limited neurodegeneration of dopaminergic neurons, making these symptoms amenable to targeted therapy. SynopsisMovement disorders-related symptoms in ASA appear in the 2nd and 3rd decades of life, becoming more prevalent with age and shows abnormal neuroimaging features of basal ganglia in ASA patients, not recapitulated in ASA mice.