Huntington’s Disease (HD),also known as Huntington’s chorea, hereditary, progressive disease of the nervous system characterized by involuntary twitching movements of the arms, legs, face, and body. Patients with HD also develop concentration, memory, and emotional problems that eventually prevent them from participating in everyday activities and caring for themselves. People with HD are born with an abnormal gene, but actual symptoms of the disease usually do not begin until middle age. According to the Huntington’s Disease Society of America, approximately 30,000 people in the United States have the disease. An additional 150,000 people are said to be at risk for HD— they have an affected parent or sibling and may have inherited the disease themselves, but have not yet developed symptoms. Named after George Huntington, the American physician who first described the disease in 1872, HD is caused by a mutation, or change, in a specific gene that makes the gene longer than normal. Each person has two copies of the gene, and a person will not develop HD if both copies of the gene are normal. If an individual has one mutated copy, however, he or she is destined to develop HD. If a parent has one mutated copy of the gene, each child has a 50 percent chance of inheriting the abnormal gene, and therefore, developing the disease. On the other hand, if a child does not inherit the HD gene, he or she will not develop the disease and cannot pass the disease on to anyone else. (Backman, L., Robins-Wahlin, T. B., Lundin, A., Ginovart, N., & Farde, L. (1997)
It is a degenerative brain disorder that usually strikes people in their 30s or 40s and slowly robs them of their ability to walk, talk and reason. It progresses over 10 to 15 years, and eventually people die of choking, infection or heart failure...................
