Impaired virilisation during embryonic development and pubertal arrest in patients with androgen insensitivity syndromes (AIS) is usually caused by mutations in the androgen receptor (AR)- or the 5alpha-reductase II (5RII) gene. However, identical mutations may lead to strikingly different phenotypes. To investigate whether this may be caused by individually altered transcription rates in fibroblasts from the genital region (GF) from affected patients, we applied competitive reverse transcribed PCRs (competitive RT-PCR) targeting AR- and 5RII-transcripts. We could demonstrate that AR- and 5RII-mRNA concentrations in cells from patients with partial and complete AIS and missense mutations in the AR- or 5RII-gene are normal or only moderately lowered compared to equally aged normal controls. However, in a patient bearing a premature stop-codon in the AR-gene a considerably lowered AR-transcript level was detected. We conclude, that in patients with incomplete virilisation disorders due to missense mutations, transcription regulation of AR and 5RII generally follows normal patterns. Accordingly, the premature stop-codon found in one patient's AR-gene may rather cause reduced transcript stability than an impairment of transcription activity. Therefore, altered AR- and 5RII-transcription rates in fibroblasts from the GF do not seem to be the cause for the variable genotype-phenotype correlation in androgen insensitivity syndrome.
