Huntington Disease (HD) is a fatal, inherited brain disease that effects 1 in 10,000 Canadians. However, 1 in 1000 are personally effected by HD, by being a caregiver, family member, or friend.
The child of each parent who has Huntington Disease has a 50/50 chance of inheriting the gene, which causes HD.
Some of the symptoms of HD are:Memory loss, loss of motor skills, cognitive function loss, slurred speech.
The person with HD, will in time become dependant on others for their care, due to the loss of the brain cells that are killed. Eventually, the disease causes death.
The Human Genome Project announced in June 2000 has given a lot of hope towards the cure of Huntington Disease. The sequencing of the human DNA will be a tremendous benefit to all genetic diseases, and we all hope that the science moves quickly into the next piece needed for a cure.
Huntington Disease starts in the center of the brain, in an area called the "caudate strip". This is where all the lobes of the brain attach to.
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As you can see from the photo, the caudate strip is the center of activity for the lobe attachment.
When HD starts to kill off the cells of the brain, it is really hard to tell what exact symptoms each person will have.
You can have 2 or more people with the same term of this disease, and have extremely different symptoms. One may have a lot of physical symptoms, such as a staggered walk, or jerking movenents of the limbs, but the other may have a mental symptom, such as memory loss, or a loss of cognitive skills such as sequencing numbers, or the ability to follow instructions.
The wide range of symptoms of Huntington Disease have made it very hard to completly diagnose until 1993 when the gene was found.
There were a terrible amount of HD patients diagnosed with Parkinson's and with Alzheimer's disease, due to some of the same actions of the patients.
Others, unfortunately were sent into mental institutions , said to be suffering from acute schizophrenia, and paranoid dillusions. The family members, of course at that time believed the diagnosis. Another sad part of it is, is that the gene was passed down to the next generation and the whole thing started again.
As said, with the advent of the DNA test, this is no longer the case.
With the dedicated work of corporations all over the world, and health care professionals, we are all hoping for a cure for this deadly disease. Until then, you will hear from me as much as possible, to spread the word.
As I have said, my wife was diagnosed in 1997 with Huntington Disease. There was nothing in the Chatham-Kent area for us, or anybody else to get information, or any type of resources for Huntington.
This is where my sister-in-law Brenda comes in. She called the Huntington Society of Canada, and got the word out about what we wanted to do.
A real good turnout was for the information session at Brenda and Vaughn's house. We got things rolling pretty quickly and have had a steady turnout for our meetings in the area. In a little over a year, we have all come a long way.All of us have learned alot from each other, and from ourselves.
I want to take the opportunity to thank Brenda in this forum for giving us the kick start to get the Chatham group going. It is really a boost to get the people motivated for a cause.
The Chatham Kent group and the Trapshoot for Huntington go hand in hand. We suport each other all the way, and that's the only way we can get to the ultimate goal that we are looking for.
We are here to kill the dragon called Huntington.
