A team of researchers from IPATIMUP and IPO-Porto discovered that a high frequency of paraganglioma (autonomic nervous system tumors) patients from northern Portugal harbored a germline mutation in the SDHB gene, classified as a founder mutation. This mutation was identical in all patients, indicating that it occurred in a single mutagenic event (in one individual) that took place several years ago, having been transmitted throughout generations and settled in the Portuguese population from northern Portugal.
