What Causes Huntington's Disease

Huntington's disease is an inherited neurodegenerative disorder. It is passed on to children from one or both parents (though two parents with Huntington's is extraordinarily rare) in an autosomal dominant manner. This is different from autosomal recessive disorder, which requires two altered genes (one from each parent) to inherit the disorder.

Huntington's Disease is a genetic autosomal disorder which effects the brain. It affects about 1 in 20,000 individuals. The symptoms of the disease do not start to occur until after or around 40 years of age. With the onset of the disease the patient starts to gradually deteriorate intellectually, this deterioration also causes involuntary movements. Scientists have only recently found the section of the gene which causes Huntington's disease, and this is allowed them to devise pre-symptomatic tests. However, a cure for the disease is yet to be found.

Huntington's Disease is a devastating and progressive neurological disorder that resu lts primarily from degeneration of nerve cells deep in the center of the brain. The condition was first described by George Huntington, a physician in New York, in 1872. Even then, the physician recognized the all-encompassing factors of the disorder when describing it as, "coming on gradually but surely, increasing by degrees, and often occupying years in its development until the hapless sufferer is but a quivering wreck of his former self".

Huntington’s disease is an autosomal, dominant inherited disorder caused by a polyglutamine expansion at the amino-terminal on the huntingtin protein. It causes a progressive degeneration of spiny nerve cells in the striatum and cortex of the brain, impairing a person’s functional and cognitive abilities. Polyglutamine repeats of 36 are found to be non-threating but sequences containing an additional two or three repeats are associated with Huntington’s disease.

The main goal of treatment is to get the symptoms to go away as quickly as possible. Most people with this disorder respond well to relaxation techniques and reassurance from their health care provider that the symptoms are stress related. For people with symptoms that do not go away, the following treatment options are

An example of a dominant genetic disorder is Huntington’s disease or HD. Huntington’s disease affects the brain and causes the nerve cells in the brain to breakdown. Once the nerve cells are affected, a person’s physical and mental state will start to deteriorate. Huntington’s disease is incurable and affects people from 30 to 50 years old. Once a person has had HD for more than 10 years, the

Huntington's disease is an autosomal dominant disorder, which is found on the # 4 chromosome. George Huntington discovered it in 1872. It mainly has an effect on the nervous system. There are around 210,000 bases between D4S180 and D4S127. The disease itself is found in 2% of people in their childhood, and in 5% of the people they were older then 60. (Miller p 16) In the majority of the affected people the disease is detected between the ages of 35-45. In males the disease begins around the time of their childhood. However, in females it begins later in life. This severe symptom has a tendency for the condition to worsen as it is passed on from generation to generation. Huntington’s disease is paternally

Huntington's disease is inherited in an autosomal dominant fashion. The child of an affected parent has a 50% chance of inheriting the disease. The discovery of the HD gene in 1993 has made it possible to test at-risk individuals for Huntington's disease before symptoms occur.

Huntington's disease is a genetic disease that causes nerve cells in the brain to deteriorate over time, leading patients to suffer from involuntary movements, emotional disturbances, and cognitive decline. The disease is caused by the mutation of a single gene located on chromosome four. The faulty gene, which codes for a protein called huntingtin, can have anywhere from thirty to fifty more repeats of the CAG codon than a healthy gene. The function of huntingtin is unknown, but an over-abundance of it is confirmed to be the cause of Huntington's disease. Genetic testing and diagnosis for Huntington's disease usually focuses on analyzing blood tests from both the individual and a family member to count the number of CAG repeats encoded in

In a very few cases, a gene that causes AHC can be passed down through families. There are no other known risk factors for AHC.

family, and an analysis will be done. This sampling of the blood will be performed

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 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 dominantly transmitted neurodegenerative disorder. Symptoms typically don’t surface until between the ages of 30 to 50 and worsen throughout 10 to 15 years. Symptoms include personality changes, like mood disorders and behavioral changes, involuntary movements called chorea, inability to walk, slurred speech and difficulty swallowing, all which are progressive over the course of the illness. Children whose parents carry the Huntington’s gene have a 50% chance of inheriting the disease. Huntington’s plays a major role with regards to how it affects a person’s human development. When a person’s natural development is drastically reformed it can affect their personal and social relationships and can lead to emotional

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the body's instruction manual for making you who you are. DNA is a large molecule that is coiled into a double helix. It is responsible for determining the phenotype of an organism. A child can inherit a genetic mutation if just one parent passes along the mutations or faulty gene. This type of disorder called autosomal-dominant inheritance. The examples of autosomal dominant genetic disorders are; Achondroplasia (dwarfism) Alzheimer's disease (mental deterioration, usually strikes late in life) Huntington's disease (mental deterioration and uncontrollable movements; strikes in the middle age) and Hypercholesterolemia (excess cholesterol in blood; heart disease). In addition, there is autosomal recessive; transmission requires each parent to pass on the gene for it to be represented.