News

Rare disease-themed videos glowed on a large screen before an audience of people in wheelchairs, with crutches, and bearing oxygen tanks this Nov. 9 and 10 in San Francisco. Disorder: The Rare Disease Film Festival strives to eventually host a film about every one of the nearly 7,000 rare…

Q-Motor, a promising motor-assessment tool for adults with Huntington’s disease, also provides non-invasive, easy, and sensitive measures to gauge motor function changes in children and adolescents, a study shows. The data highlights Q-Motor’s potential to detect subtle motor changes associated with Huntington’s disease in at-risk youth. The study, “…

Stem cells created from cells taken from juvenile Huntington’s disease (JHD) patients showed a delay in developing into mature neurons, but one that is reversible, a study reports.  The study, “Characterization of Neurodevelopmental Abnormalities in iPSC-Derived Striatal…

PIGBOS — a newly discovered mitochondrial microprotein involved in a cellular stress-response mechanism called unfolded protein response (UPR) — might be a treatment target for neurodegenerative diseases like Huntington’s, a study suggests. The study, “Regulation of the ER stress response by a mitochondrial microprotein,” was published…

MC10 and the University of Vermont have teamed up to advance understanding of gait impairments in Huntington’s disease and other movement disorders. The partnership will combine MC10’s BioStamp nPoint device to measure physical parameters (biometrics) obtained from the lower limbs with the University of Vermont’s biomedical…

Massive inflammation and other changes in the striatum, an area of the brain selectively destroyed in Huntington’s disease (HD), are already present before patients develop any symptoms, a study has found. These findings could help understand how the disease unravels and…

The length of CAG repeats within the huntingtin (HTT) gene tends to increase as people with Huntington’s disease get older and is directly correlated with poor clinical outcomes, a study has found. The study, “A genetic association study of glutamine-encoding DNA sequence structures, somatic CAG expansion, and…

People with Huntington’s disease who develop psychosis tend to have worse cognitive and behavioral disturbances, reduced ability to function, and fewer involuntary movements than patients who do not experience these psychiatric symptoms, a new study reports. The study, titled “Psychosis and longitudinal outcomes in Huntington disease: the…

Analysis of handwriting movements using a pen tablet and specialized software can accurately distinguish people with Huntington’s disease who are still asymptomatic from those without the disease, a new study suggests. The findings also reveal that certain stroke features differ significantly between healthy individuals and patients who are already…

Mutations associated with Huntington’s disease increase nerve cells’ resistance to high levels of manganese, according to a recent study. The results of the study, “Huntington’s disease associated resistance to Mn neurotoxicity is neurodevelopmental stage and neuronal lineage dependent,” were published in NeuroToxicology. Manganese (Mn) is…