Huntington's+Disease

Cody, Dylan, and Tyler

= ﻿ Huntington's Disease =

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The video contains an expert explaining the effects of HD and 39 year old Lee talks about his HD and the importants of testing for it.

What is Hunington's Disease-
Huntington’s disease (HD) is degeneration of brain cells, called neurons, in certain areas of the brain. When the degeneration of the brain cells occurs, uncontrolled movements, loss of intelligents, and emotional disturbances all start to kick in. HD is a disease that is passed down from parent to their child through a mutation in the normal gene. The child has a 50-50 chance of getting the gene. If the child of the parent that has HD does not get the gene, then he/she will not develop HD and will not pass it down to their child.

Some symptoms that you get from HD include mood swings, depression, irritability or trouble driving, learning new things, remembering facts, or making a decision. As HD progresses the person that has HD will become worse they will have trouble concentrating and the person might have trouble feeding him or herself and swallowing becomes difficult. HD varies from person to person on how fast the disease progresses. Physicians have used many different test to diagnose HD these tests include genetic tests, neurological and laboratory test and medical history. In 1 to 3 percent of people with HD, HD can be found in the family history. The life expectancy is 20 year old of a person with HD.

Cause-
Huntington’s disease is caused by a genetic defect in the 4th chromosome. The defect causes CAG, a section of DNA, to occur more often than it should. Where normally this section is repeated 10 to 35 times in DNA, a person with Huntington’s disease can have it repeated anywhere from 36 to 120 times. As the gene is passed on to each generation the number of repeats in the CAG tends to increase. A person with A higher number of repeats tend to be effected by the disease sooner, so as the gene is passed along through the family, symptoms become evident at earlier and earlier ages.

Treatment-
There are many medications for HD that Physicians prescribe to help control emotional and movement problems. In 2008, The U.S Food and Drug Administration approved tetrabenzine for Huntington’s chorea. Huntington’s chorea is an involuntary writing movement. As the disease progresses it becomes uncontrollable the movements appear to be bizarre and include odd bodily postures. This drug was the first drug that was approved in the United States to treat the disease. Fatigue, restlessness, or hyperexcitability are a symptom of most drugs used to treat HD. Exercise is a key necessity in people with HD because they tend to do better than those who do not. There is no Cure for HD but the treatments can reduce the variety of some symptoms.

Reseach Being Done-
Electronic and other technologies are some scientific investigations that are being used to see how the gene affects the body’s chemistry and metabolism and what it does to the different parts of the brain. The scientist are breeding lab animals hoping to duplicate the features of HD so the researches can learn more about the progression and the symptoms of Huntington’s Disease. The investigators are implanting fetal tissue in to nonhuman primate hoping to understand, and restore, or replace functions that are lost my HD. Areas that are under investigation are excitotoxicity which is an over-stimulation of cells by natural chemicals found in the brain, defective energy metabolism ( a defect in the mitochondria), oxidative stress (normal metabolic activity in the brain that produces toxic compounds called free radicals), and tropic factors and this is a natural chemical substance found in the human body that may protect against cell death.

**History-** The first person that discovered the disease was Goerge Huntington in 1872. He noticed that the generation of his patients family had been carriang the disease threw out generations. He realized their conditions must be linked. He presented his detailed and accurate definition of the disease as his first paper.

Huntington unknowingly, described the pattern as an autosomal dominant disease way before the rediscovery of the Mendelian inheritance this is the heredity of nature. This states that if one or more of the parents have the disease then one or more of the children will get it, but if the child doesn’t get it the trait is broken and the grandchild will not get it. With Huntington’s paper many other scientists became very interested in the disorder. At the end of the century a lot of the research of HD was European origin. By the end of the 19th century a report of HD were published in many countries and was recognized as a worldwide disorder.

[] -link has eductional crosswords and word search games about HD [] - link provides facts about HD
 * Informational links **

[] -There is no cure for Huntington's disease. Treatment focuses on reducing symptoms, preventing complications, and providing support and assistance to the patient and those close to him or her. - Pear [] (milk) Huntington’s Disease is a brain disorder that affects a person’s ability to think, talk, and move. [] (Neay) At Risk for Huntington's Disease [] - Huntington's disease is a disorder passed down through families in which certain nerve cells in the brain waste away, and can cause severe mood changes. (Alex)
 * <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-weight: normal;">The disease destroys cells in the basal ganglia, the part of the brain that controls movement, emotion, and cognitive ability. **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Bibliography Links **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">[] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; tab-stops: 154.5pt; tabstops: 154.5pt;">[] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; tab-stops: 154.5pt; tabstops: 154.5pt;">[] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; tab-stops: 154.5pt; tabstops: 154.5pt;">[|http://www.nhs.uk/video/pages/medialibrary.aspx?page=19&filter=&id=%7b33b3d82d-3e27-4c7c-bd25-36de4a061d40%7d&tag=&title=nhs+videos+%7c+huntington&apos%3bs+disease&uri=video%2f2009%2faugust%2fpages%2fhuntingtonsdisease.aspx[[http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000770.htm]eric]]