Genotype-based prevalence of Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome in the healthcare and genomic registry populations – breaking the ‘rare disease’ status?

The phenotype-based prevalence of Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome (BHD) is commonly estimated at 1 in 200,000–500,000. However, we demonstrate that BHD-causing FLCN variants are 75 to 180 times more prevalent in the multi-ethnic large genomic registry population. We highlight the urgent need for updated prevalence and penetrance estimates for BHD and other tumor suppressor gene syndromes, particularly among underrepresented non-European populations.