Huntington's disease is a rare genetic disorder which causes for brain regions to die because of progressive degeneration of nerve cells in the brain, and it affects movement, cognitive functions, and emotions. The disease has first symptoms which begin when someone is in their 30's and 40's, but there are ever rarer cases where is shows up in peoples 20's which is referred to as "Juvenile Huntington's disease". It has been shown that Huntington's is caused by a repeated bit of the HTT gene, and in some brain cells, that repeated bit can grow to hundreds of copies over time. Based off findings it is seen that the adding of the repeated in
What is shown now is that if we are able to keep the growth of the repeats in order than we may be able to slow or even stop the disease from moving forward. Based off this finding, researchers are now looking for ways to lower the level of Huntington.
Sources
Why Huntington’s disease may take so long to develop (sciencenews.org)
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