Huntington's Disease Symptoms

Huntington's Disease Symptoms
Huntington's Disease is an anomaly of a genetic type within the central nervous system. It is also called Huntington's chorea, where it was named after an American Physician who had the chance to describe the condition in the year 1872. The disease is believed to be a result of inheriting a rather faulty gene. It is also a very rare neurological disorder that causes brain cells to face an abnormal death. Also known as HD, Huntington's disease affects about one in 10,000 of the people descending from Western Europe and in one on a million Asian and African descents. It is a progressive disorder, meaning the symptoms will always worsen with time.

Huntington's disease symptoms manifest in persons in both psychological and physical ways. The psychiatric manifestations do vary and might precede cognitive and motor changes. There is a rather common occurrence of depression and personality changes, as well as symptoms that look like those of schizophrenia, occurring in about 6-25% of all the HD cases. The first signs of the Huntington's disease are presented with a very clumsy kind of behavior.

Since there might be erratic and rather random movements of the hands and arms, a person might not be able to control their arms as before. At first, the symptoms might be very subtle where it is not difficult for a person to attribute them to some other causes. The unfortunate thing is that treatment might be delayed since the victim might disguise the behaviors to avert denial and embarrassment. As the disease keeps on progressing, you might notice such symptoms as postural instability, the inability to keep up with some voluntary postural kind of movement, a very poor diaphragm and tongue control, slurred speech that is poorly articulated and a very strained voice or one that is sometimes loud inappropriately.

There might be other symptoms detected from the behavioral and emotional changes that develop over a period of time, having a direct effect on an individual's personality, displaying signs such as irritability, complaining, need to be critical, impulsiveness, paranoia and suspiciousness as well as lack of sheer self-control. You have to remember the symptoms are always irreversible and quite difficult for the victims to cope with, such that the individuals with Huntington's disease will often become depressed clinically ending up displaying some signs of manic and hostile behavior. As an increase in the impairment of cognitive abilities, the individuals might require assistance in communication since some recognizable conversations and words might become very difficult.