scoliosis

Infants with type I disease are usually hypotonic from birth but develop spasticity, psychomotor retardation, and hyperreflexia within 6 months.  Early death from cardiopulmonary disease or infection is common.  Hepatomegaly, coarse facial features, brachydactyly, and cardiomyopathy with valvular dysfunction are common.  Dermal melanocytosis has also been described in infants in a pattern some have called Mongolian spots.  Skeletal dysplasia is a feature and often leads to vertebral deformities and scoliosis.  The ears are often large and low-set, the nasal bridge is depressed, the tongue is enlarged and frontal bossing is often striking.  Hirsutism, coarse skin, short digits, and inguinal hernias are common.

The juvenile form, type II, has a later onset with psychomotor deterioration, seizures and skeletal changes apparent between 7 and 36 months and death in childhood.  Visceral involvement and cherry-red spots are usually not present. 

Type III, or adult form, is manifest later in the first decade or even sometime by the 4^th decade.  Symptoms and signs are more localized.  Neurological signs are evident as dystonia or speech and gait difficulties.  Dementia, parkinsonian signs, and extrapyramidal disease are late features.  No hepatosplenomegaly, facial dysmorphism, or cherry red spots are present in most individuals. Lifespan may be normal in this type. 

Vascular anomalies are often seen and those that impact blood supply to the kidneys can induce severe hypertension especially in children (pheochromocytomas are also a risk).  Coarctations and aneurysmal anomalies can obstruct the blood supply to major organs, sometimes acutely.  Some degree of cognitive impairment and sometimes mental retardation can be seen in nearly half of patients, even in the absence of other obvious neurological deficits.  Short stature, tibial pseudoarthrosis, sphenoid dysplasia, and scoliosis are common.  Osteopenia and frank osteoporosis are seen in approximately half of patients.  A small percentage of patients develop malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (lifetime risk 8-13%).  Rare patients develop other malignancies, primarily sarcomas.

Diagnosis is based on the presence of some combination of typical features such as cafe-au-lait spots, Lisch nodules, neurofibromas, optic pathway gliomas, axillary or groin freckling, and bone dysplasia.  The underlying disease is progressive and the accuracy of diagnosis improves in older patients.

Patients with the Marfan phenotype are usually tall with disproportionately long limbs (dolichostenomelia) and digits (arachnodactyly).   Patients frequently have scoliosis or kyphoscoliosis.  The joints are lax and hyperflexible although contractures can also occur.  The sternum is often deformed, either as a pectus excavatum, or sometimes pectus carinatum.  The hard palate is high and narrow resulting in crowding of the teeth and maloccclusion.  The defect in fibrillin is responsible for the weakness in connective tissue that leads to frequent cardiac valve malfunction, especially insufficiency of the aortic valve resulting from aortic dilatation, tear, and rupture.  The latter is often life-threatening as aortic dissection can be fatal.  Mitral valve prolapse is seen as well.  Cardiovascular disease is primarily responsible for the shortened life expectancy in this disease, more pronounced among males.

This disorder is clinically heterogeneous because of the variable degree of involvement of all bony tissue.  The primary manifestations are secondary to endocrine dysfunction and fibrous dysplasia.  Thyrotoxicosis, Cushing syndrome, pituitary gigantism, hearing deficits, and precocious puberty (in both sexes) are common.  The skin often has a cafe-au-lait pattern of pigmentation.