- There are several experienced and compassionate medical clinicians in world available to help HD patients, their families, and community health care providers.
- Psychiatric and cognitive symptoms of early Huntington’s Disease begin approximately 8-15 years before onset of motor symptoms
- The aggressive treatment of depressive symptoms and irritability may allow individuals to remain productive longer, and improve quality of life for the patient and family.
- Finding productive work, whether home-based, volunteer, or paid, will help patients maintain self-esteem and education and caregiver support help there family and also Creativity living arrangements.
- There also try to get them in-home care, and alternate transportation plans can protect HD patients in the community, lowering safety risks and hospitalizations, and delay or prevent nursing home placement.
- The most recognizable symptoms include involuntary jerking movements of the limbs, torso, and facial muscles. These are often accompanied by mood swings, depression, irritability, slurred speech, and clumsiness. As the disease progresses, common symptoms include difficulty swallowing, unsteady gait, loss of balance, impaired reasoning, and memory problems. Eventually, the individual becomes totally dependent on others for care, with death often due to pneumonia, heart failure, or another complication.
- Cell and animal models can replicate many features of the disease and are now being used to test new theories and therapies. Although no effective treatments for slowing disease progression currently exist, clinical and observational trials are being conducted. Any of these may yield an effective treatment that would slow the progression or delay onset of the disease while researchers continue working toward a cure.
- Affecting some 30,000 Americans and placing 200,000 more Americans at risk for inheriting the disease from an affected parent, Huntington’s disease is now considered one of the most common hereditary brain disorders.
- Huntington's disease is inherited in an autosomal dominant pattern. This means that everyone who inherits the faulty gene will eventually get the disease. A parent with a mutation in the HD gene has a 50 percent chance of passing the disease to their children.
- The Huntington Study Group is a world leader in facilitating high-quality clinical research trials and studies in Huntington disease (HD).