Huntingtons Disease :: essays research papers

Huntingtons Disease     Huntingtons infirmity, or Huntngtons chorea, is a genetic complaint thatcauses selective neural cell death, which results in chorea, or irregular,jerking movements of the limbs caused by involuntary muscle contractions, anddementia. It can cause a lack of parsimony and depression. It also maycause atrophy of the caudate nucleus, a get down of the brain. However, symptomsvary between individuals, with some diseased persons awarding symptoms that others donot. Those stand uping from Huntingtons disease normally begin displayingsymptoms between the ages of 30 and 50, but has been known to show itself inpeople as young as two and as old as 80.     Huntingtons disease is inehrited from one of the dupes pargonnts.Since the gene for HD is dominant, there is a 50% chance of a sufferersoffspring inheriting the disease. Because a victim normally does not begin todisplay symptoms until after the period in which he or she wou ld have childrenand the disease may have been misdiagnosed in earlier generations as Parkinsonsdisease or other standardised affliction, he or she might pass along the gene without unconstipated knowing it.     The gene for Huntingtons disease is located on the short develop ofchromosome four in cytogenetic band 4p16.3. It was first identified in 1993.While everyone posseses this gene, in someone suffering from Huntingtonsdisease, the number of repeats of a trustworthy trinucleotide, cytozine-adenine-guanine (CAG), is much larger than what it is in a normal person. In an averageperson, the number of repeats is between 9 and 37. But is a sufferer of HD, therepeat count is from 37 to 86. While nobody has found a direct correlationbetween the number of repeats and the age when symptoms appear, there is assure that people with very high numbers of repeats contract the rarer early-onset Huntingtons disease, which unremarkably affects people under the age of 20.It is estimated that between .1 and 10 % of people who suffer from Huntingtonsdisease have obtained it through new mutations.     There are triad different tests for Huntingtons disease. The first,presymptomatic testing, is for people who are at risk for the disease. Thesecond, prenatal testing, is a testing of a fetus at risk for the disease. The trine type of testing, confirmatory testing, is used on someone suspected ofhaving Huntingtons disease.      manipulation of Huntingtons disease usually involves counciling andeducation about the disease of both the family and the longanimous. Since thesymptoms are so varied in both type and severeness from patient to patient,medical treatment must be individualized.     Depression, a common symptom, is usually treated with tricyclic