Huntington's Disease

Writer: Riya Kathpalia

Understanding the complexity of different diseases, disorders, and mental illnesses, along with its symptoms provide us with a comprehensive knowledge of what’ s ultimately wrong with our body. It is fascinating to understand how our body mechanisms truly work and ensure that we ’re healthy.

Huntington’ s Disease is one of these complex and interesting diseases. It is a rare, incurable, neurodegenerative, and progressive genetic brain disease caused by a single defective gene on chromosome 4, one of the 23 human chromosomes that carries an individual’ s entire genetic code. This defective gene builds the blueprint for a protein called “huntingtin”. This protein's normal function is not yet fully understood by scientists, but scientists identified its defective form as the cause of Huntington's disease. As this protein accumulates in the brain, the greater the damage it inflicts upon the brain. Defective huntingtin proteins lead to detrimental amends in the brain that can cause abnormal involuntary movements, a severe decline in critical thinking and reasoning skills, irritability, depression, and other mood changes.

Symptoms

You may wonder What are the identifiable symptoms of this disease? Symptoms of the disease usually develop between the age of 30 and 50, but they can appear as early as the age of 2 or as late as the age of 80. The hallmark symptom of Huntington's disease is uncontrolled movement of the arms, legs, head, face and upper body. Not only can it cause a decline in critical thinking and reasoning skills, but one’s memory, concentration, judgment, and ability to plan and organize can be distorted and gradually degenerate consequently. The changes in the brain leads to alterations in mood, especially depression, anxiety, and uncharacteristic and irritability. Additionally, a common symptom of Huntington’s is obsessive compulsive behavior (OCD), a mental disease that causes an individual to repeat unwanted obsessions multiple times to ease themselves.

Treatment

Currently, there is no cure for Huntington’ s Disease, nor a way to halt the damage it does to an individual’ s brain and life. However, there are potential effective treatments. These treatments focus on managing the symptoms one experiences.

Living with Huntington’ s is not easy, therefore, let’ s give hope and try to comfort those that have Huntington’ s. Friends and families of the patient can most definitely help an individual push through a difficult period. Alas, since Huntington is a genetic disease, study the medical history of your family carefully to see if you have any genetic disorders that you may inherit!

Take care!

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References:

“Huntington's Disease: Symptoms, Causes, and Treatment.” Medical News Today, MediLexicon International,

www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/159552#symptoms.

“Overview of Huntington's Disease.” Overview of Huntington's Disease | Huntington's Disease Society of America,

hdsa.org/what-is-hd/overview-of-huntingtons-disease/.