Huntington's Disease Research Paper

Huntington’s disease is a hereditary brain disorder that is progressive in neurodegeneration; which means, there is a loss of function and structures of one’s neurons. In the long run it results in the loss of both mental and physical control. The disease affects muscle coordination, cognition and behavior. It used to be known as Huntington’s chorea because it is the most common genetic disease that is the cause of abnormal twitching. Huntington 's has an intense effect on patients, as individuals gradually lose the ability to reason, speak and swallow. Also, motor symptoms, which affects in problems with walking, (Mayo Clinic Staff, 2011).

Abstract: Huntington’s Disease- Huntington 's disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative genetic disorder. It affects the muscle coordination and decline in cognitive that leads to dementia. It affects both males and females in their middle age (J.D, 2015). Huntington’s disease is most common in genetic causes the leads to abnormal involuntary movement also called Huntington’s chorea (J.D, 2015).

Huntington’s Disease is a genetic disease that causes gradual brain deterioration in a wide range of ages. Early onset conditions can occur in an individual younger than twenty and some late onset conditions can develop as late as 80. Early symptoms are subtle, such as emotional changes, as time goes on symptoms worsen to memory loss and loss of cognitive functions, then there is complete loss of the body. In most cases, death occurs for related complications such as pneumonia, infections, falls, and inability to swallow within ten to twenty years of symptom appearance. If someone has Huntington’s Disease, there isn’t anything to prevent brain deterioration. Even If someone without symptoms is tested and predicted HD(Huntington's Disease),

Huntington’s disease is an inherited disorder of the central nervous system, and the degeneration of nerve cells in the brain, which causes the brain to deteriorate.

Huntington’s disease (HD) is a fatal genetic neurodegenerative genetic disorder affecting the brain. It results in uncontrolled jerking movements (chorea), cognitive and behavioural changes. HD leads to incapacitation of the patient and ends fatal. However, death rarely results from HD itself. It is typically due to complications of HD. HD was originally called Huntington’s chorea, because of the involuntary movements that looked like jerky dancing. Chorea is the Greek word for dancing. The majority of HD patients start developing the disease around 30 to 40 or even later. If HD onsets before the age of 20, the condition is called juvenile Huntington’s disease. This form of HD has often expresses the symptoms different and progresses faster

Symptoms for Huntington’s disease usually become apparent later in life, between the ages of 30 and 50, but in unusual and severe cases can be visible from as early as age 2. There are three distinct types of symptoms defective huntingtin kills off brain cells, Cognitive, Psychiatric, and Movement disorders. Cognitive Disorders include difficulty in focusing on tasks, a tendency to get stuck on a thought, lack of control that can result in outbursts, lack of awareness of self-behavior, slowness in processing ideas, and difficulty in learning. Psychiatric disorders from Huntington's Disease, is most often depression, however they can also be obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), or repeating actions over and over again, mania, or overactivity and hyperactive behavior, bipolar disorder, which is uncontrolled alternating behaviors of depression and mania. Movement disorders include jerking movements, muscle problems, slow eye movements, impaired posture and balance, difficulty with the speech or swallowing, as the tell- tale symptoms for Huntington's Disease . As a result of the above symptoms, it is also common for people with Huntington’s is drastic weight loss (Huntington's

The symptomotology of Huntington’s have been recognized for several hundreds of years, but the etiology was ambiguous until recently when it was discovered that an expansion in the polyglutamine tract led to misfolding (citation). Although a lot of progress has been made, the way in which the mutant Huntingtin protein damages cells is still not fully understood. The events that preceede the discovery were crucial and are a perfect example of the use of pedigrees and linkage analysis to identify the locus of the causal gene of a disease.

Huntington’s disease (HD) is a rare and fatal disease known as a polyglutamine neurodegenerative disorder effecting only 4-10 per 100,000 people of European decent (Driver-Dunckly et. Al 2007). This means there is a problem with the trinucleotide that codes for glutamine, cytosine-adenine-guanine (CAG). In the case of HD there is an extreme overproduction of the CAG repeats in the protein huntingtin. Accumulation of this mutated form of the protein in neurons causes cell atrophy which in turn causes the brain to malfunction. The disease was first described by Dr. George Huntington in 1872, however it wasn’t until 1993 that the cause of the disease was actually discovered (Bertram et. Al 2005).HD is characterized by symptoms effecting the afflicted

The topic that will be discussed and introduce is the neural disease knowns as Huntington’s Disease. The topic of Huntington’s Disease will be discussed about to get a much broader knowledge on the neural disease consist of ten pages. The first page will discuss the background and the history of Huntington’s Disease. What year was the neural disease founded and whom first discovered. The second page will discuss the biochemical basis of Huntington’s Disease and how it’s developed and what type of mutation happens for the disease to become onset or late offset. The third page will discuss the symptoms of Huntington’s Disease and when the disease symptoms develop and whether if it happens in youths or elderly. And what is the range of symptoms

Huntington’s Disease is a genetic disorder that causes the breakdown of the nerves cells in the brain. It is eventually fatal, and deteriorates a person’s abilities mentally and physically. There is currently no known cure for Huntington’s Disease.

The author states got one person in every 10,000 in the United States gets Huntington's disease. The symptoms are usually begin with minor arm jerks and some facial twitches. Then following these symptoms tremors spread to various parts of the body and then it develops into writhing. People start to lose the ability to learn or improve motor skills. Basically what is going on in the brain is, "the output from the basal ganglia is inhibitory to the thalamus, and damage to the basal ganglia leads to increased activity in motor areas of the Thelma's. This increase produces the involuntary jerking movements." People with Huntington's disease suffer from psychological disorders as well. Sometimes in the early stages of Huntington's disease people are misdiagnose with having schizophrenia. The book also shows a picture of a normal person's brain and a person’s brain with Huntington's disease, the ventricles expanded because of the loss of neurons; therefore the ventricle looks much larger than it actually is, and it is very evident in the picture (Page 255). Last there is a procedure which enables physicians to predict who or who will not get Huntington disease. To determine this, physicians can count the number of consecutive repeats on the combination C-A-G on one gene on chromosome four. In saying this if the number is fewer than thirty-six, the person will not develop Huntington's disease. Although there are several promising drugs currently in various stages of investigation but none of them have been approved for human use, they have only been tested on animals. I personally think that this needs to be something researchers focus on so we can help the people that are suffering from this terrible

Huntington’s is named after George Huntington who was the first person to describe the disease in 1872. However it wasn’t until 1993 that the gene that causes Huntington’s was discovered. Huntington’s is an inherited progressive disease that affects the brain and causes severe cognitive decline. The result is involuntary movements, emotional disturbance, damaged perception and memory as well as overall lowered though processing ability.

Huntington’s disease is a chronic and fatal neurological disorder caused by a trinucleotide repeat. It is caused by a genetic defect on chromosome four that causes a CAG repeat. When the number of repeats exceeds a certain amount, a neurological disease results. In a normal person, this section of DNA is repeated 10 to 35 times, but in a person with Huntington’s disease it is repeated 36 to 120 times. The disease is genetic and is passed down in families. If one parent has Huntington’s disease offspring have a 50% chance of getting the disease. The average age of onset is 40 years and the disease progresses over 10 to 25 years.

gene pool has been traced back to the 1800's to a woman named Maria Concepcion.

The progression of CAG triplets result for the decline in the age of patient. However, the repeating of trinucleotide may extend by the process of carryout from parent to offspring, and the age of individual may decrease from one generation to next generation. The patient that are diagnosed with the repetition will suffer from Huntington disease in their whole life, since the mutation gain-of-function, in which the mRNA or protein takes on a new property or is expressed