Clinical and Molecular Characteristics of Childhood-Onset Stargardt Disease

Childhood-onset STGD is associated with severe visual loss, early morphologic changes, and often generalized retinal dysfunction, despite often having less severe fundus abnormalities on examination. One third of children do not have flecks at presentation. The relatively high proportion of deleterious ABCA4 variants supports the hypothesis that earlier onset disease is often owing to more severe variants in ABCA4 than those found in adult-onset disease.