Symptoms
Huntington's disease is known to produce three types of symptoms: movement, cognitive, and psychiatric.
Movement
Uncontrolled movement, or tics, may develop in the fingers, feet, face, or trunk. This is the beginning stage of chorea—involuntary, rapid, ceaseless movement. Chorea can become more intense when the person is anxious or disturbed. Over time other symptoms, such as the following, emerge:
Cognitive
Over time judgment, memory, and other cognitive functions begin to deteriorate into dementia. As Huntington's disease progresses, the ability to concentrate becomes more difficult. The person may have difficulty driving, keeping track of things, making decisions, answering questions, and may lose the ability to recognize familiar objects.
Psychiatric
Early psychiatric symptoms of Huntington's disease are subtle, varied, and easily overlooked or misinterpreted.Depression is the most common psychiatric symptom of Huntington's and often develops early in the course of the disease. Signs of depression include:
- Hostility/irritability
- Inability to take pleasure in life (anhedonia)
- Lack of energy
Some people develop manic-depression, or bipolar disorder, during the course of the disease.
A person with Huntington's also may exhibit psychotic behavior:
- Delusions
- Hallucinations
- Inappropriate behavior (e.g., unprovoked aggression)
- Paranoia
Body Parts Affected
The only Organ Systems in the body that is affected by Huntington's Disease is the Nervous System, Skeletal System and Muscle System. It is an inherited disorder of the brain that leads to uncontrolled movement, emotional instability, and loss of intellectual faculties. HD also causes certain nerve cells in your brain to disappear. People affected by this disease may not be able to move like they used to thus causing their Skeletal and Muscle Systems to not work as properly.
Sources Used
http://www.neurologychannel.com/huntingtons/symptoms.shtml
http://ci.columbia.edu/c1182/web/images/sect_5/c1182_5013.jpg
http://www.healthscout.com/ency/68/275/main.html#CausesandRiskFactorsofHuntington
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/huntingtons-disease/DS00401
Other Facts
An affected parent can pass Huntington's Disease along to his or her offspring, and each child has a 50 percent chance of inheriting the HD gene and developing the disease. It occurs throughout the world in all ethnic groups. Clinical onset is usually between 30 and 50 years of age.
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2 comments:
This Disease can disrupt normal body functioning, because having involuntary movement can cause loss in brain cells and even cause damage in the nervous system. This disease reminds me a lot of the tourettes syndrome.
This disease affects homeostasis and the normal body functions by disrupting responsiveness and the nervous system because they have the involuntary movements which could slowly kill the responsive nerves in their body and not send signals to the brain.
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