Machado-Joseph Disease in Israel: Clinical Phenotype and Genotype of a Jew Yemenite Subpopulation

Machado-Joseph disease (MJD) or spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA-3) is the most common dominant ataxia. The genetic cause of this late-onset degenerative disorder is the expansion of a (CAG)n tract located in the exonic region of the ATXN3 gene. In 1994 the first case of MJD among the Yemenite Jewish subpopulation living in Israel was published. The puropse of this study is to describe the clinical phenotype and genotype of the Yemenite Jewish subpopulation with MJD living in Israel