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tuberous sclerosis

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Also known as Bourneville's disease, cerebral sclerosis, epiloia, adenoma sebaceum syndrome, ts - tuberous sclerosis, TSC, tuberose sclerosis, tuberous sclerosis syndrome (disorder)

rare multisystem genetic disease that causes benign tumors to grow in the brain and on other vital organs

Key facts

Other names
Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC), Bourneville disease, Bourneville-Pringle disease
Specialty
Neurology , medical genetics
Prognosis
normal life expectancy
Frequency
7 to 12 per 100,000

via Wikipedia infobox

Research

12,431 papers

via PubMed

~27 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is a rare, multi-system genetic disorder that causes the growth of benign tumors in various organs, including the brain, kidneys, heart, liver, eyes, lungs, and skin. Symptoms may include seizures, intellectual disability, and developmental delay.

TSC has autosomal dominant inheritance, meaning a child with TSC either has one affected parent (about 1/3 of cases) or a spontaneous (de novo) mutation (about 2/3 of cases). It is caused by a mutation of either of two genes, TSC1 and TSC2, which code for the proteins hamartin and tuberin, respectively. TSC2 mutations are more frequent and have usually more severe symptoms. These proteins act as tumor growth suppressors, regulating cell proliferation and differentiation. Without them, tumors are more likely to appear.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “tuberous sclerosis” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.