autosomal recessive hereditary spastic paraplegia
Muscle biopsies from the autosomal recessive form of patients with hereditary spastic paraplegia revealed histochemical signs of a mitochondrial disorder, namely RRFs, COX-negative fibres and succinate dehydrogenase-positive hyperintense fibres.
Linkage and subsequent mutation analysis revealed large deletions in a gene dubbed paraplegin. Owing to the homology with a yeast mitochondrial ATPase with both proteolytic and chaperone-like activities, it has been suggested that this form of hereditary spastic paraplegia could be a neurodegenerative disorder due to OXPHOS deficiency, attributing a putative function in the assembly or import of respiratory chain subunits or cofactors to paraplegin.