Millions of Americans have it, a number of people don’t even know it exists, and it hits most people like a mid life crisis. Can you guess what it is? Its Huntington’s disease. This disease attacks and weakens both your nervous and immune system. Because the nervous system is attacked it causes an involuntary shaking. Many also die as an effect of the weakened immune system. For this reason the people who have Huntington’s disease often feel like a heavy burden put on their family. This guilt also causes a downfall into depression. For all these reasons Huntington’s disease is considered one of the worst genetic diseases.
Such an informal name for a disease, where could it have derived from? A doctor by the name of George Huntington’s observation of the disease assisted in his forming of the name. He described it as “hereditary chorea” (Huntington 1872). Chorea originated from the Greek word “choreia” which means dancing. His characterization of Huntington’s came from the unbalanced gait that all sufferers of the disease have. This gives them the appearance of a dancing while walking (prime health club 2010). Thus the name of “Hereditary Chorea” ( Huntington 1872).
The telltale signs of this tragic disease come in a long enumerated list. Mild, involuntary movements, clumsy behavior (often involving dropping objects from hand), stumbling during walking, lack of warmth and care, forgetting things (for example names, recent events and activities) , depression, lethargic, and constant mood swings (prime health club 2010), hallucinations, irritability, fidgety, paranoia, and psychosis (US National Library of Medicine 2011) Later symptoms would include slurred speech. When their neurons are you affected, its functioning power deceases, so the brain and mouth naturally quit working.
Eating also becomes a difficult task. The mouth and the diaphragm have problems in correctly working and because of this eating becomes a treacherous task. Which makes it difficult to be able to eat the proper amount of nutrients which leads to a significant amount of weight loss. The lack of a strong immune system makes it wearisome to fight more things off then it was before. Huntington’s disease patients start to develop an aggressive behavior. Without reason they show hostile characteristics towards not only people, but society in general.
Their moodiness becomes more extreme , this comes from their frustration and depression due to their inability to act properly (prime health channel). The cause of Huntington’s is caused by a genetic defect on chromosome 4. The defect causes a part of DNA, called a CAG repeat, to occur many more times than it is supposed to. It is normally repeated 10-28 times, but with Huntington’s 36-120 times. As the gene is passed down through a family the number of times it repeats increases. But, the more it repeats the greater the chance of symptoms at an earlier age (US National Library of Medicine 2011).
Exactly 10% of all Huntington’s disease sufferers are aged below 20 years (prime health channel). If a parent has the gene for Huntington’s there is a 50:50 the child will have it too. But, if the child isn’t give the gene it will die off there (Huntington’s Study Group 2013). Most people with this disease develop symptoms between the ages of 30 and 40. An early set on form of the disease develops around childhood or adolescence, but this only accounts for a very small amount. Some of the tests doctors and specialist run in order to check for Huntington’s are a CT scan that amy show any loss of brain tissue.
A head MRI scan, PET scan of the brain, and other genetics tests are available to determine whether a person carries the gene for Huntington’s. There are no current treatments for Huntington’s disease. There are only medicines that can make the pain more comfortable and easier to bare the excruciating pain (US National Library of Medicine 2011). In the daily life of a person with Huntington’s it is a constant struggle. They often wonder why me and why now? They must constantly everyday take medicine to subdue their reoccurring shaky movements and balance their bodies to walk. They most also live with the fact that they are slowly dying.
And family members of those affected have to live in complete fear that they could also be inflicted with this type of burdening problem. When they receive their first involuntary twitch they overcome with fear greater than they can imagine, much like the college student from Temple University in Pennsylvania, named Toi (Baltimore Sun 2005). In Conclusion, Huntington’s disease cause severe symptoms such as, memory loss, involuntary movement and so on so forth. There is no current cure for this disease and many die soon after contracting this disease due to lack of commonly used systems. This ranked one of the most horrible diseases.