Huntington's Disease

Picture - it wont let me add it!!!
Disease/Disorder - Huntington's Chorea
Common Name - Huntington's Disease
Age of Onset - Anyone from around 2 to 80+ years old can develope the disease
Duration - In most cases the disease is a gradual decline of 10-25 years that eventually ends in death by complications like heart failure or aspiration pneumonia.
Most Likely To Have the Disease - Huntington's affects both men and women and all ethnic groups with little difference.
Cause - Huntington's Disease is an inherited degenerative brain disease. The cause is a "genetic stutter" where a stretch of DNA is repeated over and over at the end of a gene. This takes place on chromosome four of someone suffering from Huntington's Disease.
Symptoms - There are three main catagories of symptoms for someone with Huntington's: Control of body movement, cognitive functioning, and psychological issues. There may be quick, uncontrolable, and grossly exaggerated movements, as well as memory and speech lose, difficulty organizing and switching tasks, and lose of emotional control resulting in depression, and severe outbursts.
Prognosis - Huntington's is degenerative and takes place over several years. The brain slowly deteriorates and symptoms progress until some major organ fails causing a complicated death.
Treatment - There are no medications to slow or hault the progression of Huntington's all that can be done is symptom managment. Often times anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, and Neuroleptic drugs are prescribed to manage some of the symptoms.
Hyperlink - http://www.caregiver.org/caregiver/jsp/content_node.jsp?nodeid=574