Margarida Maia, PhD, science writer —

A type of brain nerve cells called layer 5a pyramidal neurons — especially those projecting into the striatum, a brain region greatly affected in Huntington’s disease — are lost early in the course of Huntington’s, a study found. Excessive CAG repeats in the HTT gene, the cause of…

Scientists at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) have mapped onto a genetic database nearly a million tandem repeat (TR) expansions — head-to-tail copies of short DNA sequences — to better understand how they’re linked to several human diseases, including Huntington’s. This work, the team says, may provide “critical…

Cariprazine, an oral medication approved for schizophrenia, may ease some motor symptoms people with Huntington’s disease experience across different stages of the condition, a small study suggests. How cariprazine works in Huntington’s still isn’t clear, but researchers think it may balance out dopamine levels when they’re too high, as…

Prilenia Therapeutics plans to submit a marketing authorization application (MAA) by mid-year asking for approval in the European Union of pridopidine, an oral small molecule for treating  Huntington’s disease. The planned filing with the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use, part of the European Medicines Agency (EMA),…

Rumi Scientific has joined with X-Chem to advance in early development a suppressor, or inhibitor, of bromodomain-containing protein 9 (BRD9) as a possible Huntington’s disease treatment. “BRD9 inhibition is a novel target for the treatment of HD [Huntington’s disease] identified by our proprietary high…

People carrying fewer Huntington’s disease-causing CAG repeats in the HTT gene — who traditionally are thought to have milder disease — show similar cognitive deficits to those with more CAG repeats, a study found. However, patients with fewer repeats are less likely to show Huntington’s characteristic involuntary muscle contractions,…

Huntington’s disease could develop at earlier ages in people using calcium channel blockers to control hypertension, a study that looked into genes encoding targets of blood pressure-lowering medications reported. Findings may have important implications for managing high blood pressure in people at risk of Huntington’s, identified before disease…

A computer-based test called SelfCog, which tests various cognitive functions in a standardized manner, yielded promising results in assessing cognitive decline in people with early-stage Huntington’s disease, a study has found. SelfCog demonstrated sensitivity to detect cognitive decline over a one-year follow-up, outperforming traditional cognitive assessments, and showed associations…

Sarah Tabrizi, MD, PhD, a researcher at the University College London (UCL) in the U.K., is the winner of this year’s Lund University Arvid Carlsson Award for her work in understanding Huntington’s disease and developing treatments to slow or stop its progression. The prize is given to researchers who…

Subtle changes in speech are present before obvious symptoms of Huntington’s disease appear, and could potentially be a quantitative biomarker for the neurodegenerative disorder, a small study found. The changes in speaking identified among Huntington’s patients were linked to age and an individual’s number of disease-causing CAG repeats —…