Huntington's Disease Analysis

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Huntington’s Disease (HD), also referred to as Huntington’s chorea, Huntington chronic progressive hereditary chorea, Chronic progressive chorea and Degenerative chorea (ThinkGenetic, 2016), was named after George Huntington, who, while not the first to record the disease, was first to recount the disease accurately and with sufficient detail (Quarrell. 2008). It is an inherited genetic condition that affects the brain and is characterized through the deterioration of cognitive, behavioural and motor abilities (Albin & Dayalu. 2015).
HD is a trinucleotide repeat disorder with the Huntingtin (HTT) gene being the defective gene on chromosome 4 (Boone. 2016) and manufactures the huntingtin protein that is essential for neurons (ThinkGenetic, …show more content…
Around 5% of individuals diagnosed with HD are under the age of 20, this is known as Juvenile Huntington’s Disease (JHD) and is a consequence of anticipation. Some aspects of JHD do differ slightly from HD but overall there is minimal differences. HD symptoms can be separated into three stages; early, middle, and late, and the severity increases as time passes (ThinkGenetic, 2016). Although the stages typically correlate with the length of time a person has HD, some individuals pass through theses stages and their accompanied symptoms differently. During the early stage of HD, symptoms are few and rarely intense. Behavioural and cognitive symptoms are the most prevalent which can delay a person’s diagnosis. These include subtle personality changes such as being in a low or irritable mood, lack of motivation, being easily agitated and hypersexuality (rreddy, 2011). A person having delusions or hallucinations is not common but can occur. These symptoms and the disease in general make depression and anxiety common in the early stage of HD (ThinkGenetic, 2016). Furthermore, the ability to think when undergoing difficult tasks becomes callous (rreddy, 2011). Motor symptoms are less noticeable and serve in the early stage. Symptoms that can be present include involuntary movements like twitches in the feet, hands and face as well as infrequent and small bouts of
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