In the United States, Huntington's disease occurs in about one of every 10,000 to 20,000 people. It affects males and females equally and crosses all ethnic and racial boundaries. Typically, symptoms begin between age 30 and 55.
Who does Huntington's disease (HD) affect? Although anyone can develop HD, it tends to run in people of European descent (having family members who came from Europe). But the main factor is whether you have a parent with HD. If you do, you have a 50% chance of also having the disease.
Huntington disease affects an estimated 3 to 7 per 100,000 people of European ancestry. The disorder appears to be less common in some other populations, including people of Japanese, Chinese, and African descent.
There have been reports that juvenile onset Huntington's chorea is almost always inherited from the father, and that late-onset Huntington's chorea is inherited more often from the mother than from the father.
Gender is correlated with the prevalence of certain mental disorders, including depression, anxiety and somatic complaints. For example, women are more likely to be diagnosed with major depression, while men are more likely to be diagnosed with substance abuse and antisocial personality disorder.
One consequence is that boys are more prone to genetic diseases than girls. While the Y chromosome has retained fewer than 100 working genes, the X has more than 1,000 and is able to deploy them more intricately.
Both men and women can get it. If a parent has the Huntington's disease gene, there's a: 1 in 2 (50%) chance of each of their children developing the condition – affected children are also able to pass the gene to any children they have.
Myth 4: HD can skip generations. Fact: The HD gene mutation never skips a generation.
Prevention of Huntington's disease
Because Huntington's is a genetic disease, you can't do anything to prevent it if you have inherited it. If you have a history of Huntington's disease in your family, you may wish to have genetic counseling before having children of your own.
With dominant diseases like Huntington's Disease (HD), it is usually pretty easy to figure out risks. Generally if one parent has it then each child has a 50% chance of having it too. And if neither parent has the disease, then odds are that none of the kids will either. Huntington's is a dominant genetic disease.
For example, if a child's grandparent has Huntington's disease, but the child's at-risk parent hasn't been tested, then the child has a 25% probability of having inherited the gene. If the parent doesn't have the expanded gene, then the risk drops from 25% to 0% - meaning there is no risk at all to the child.
In this first Asian study on survival in HD patients, the median survival from onset was 14.5 years. Although a direct comparison is not possible, it appears that the mean survival in our study is shorter that that reported by Rinaldi et al. [14] (20 years, 95% CI: 18.3–21.7). In a study by Pekmezovic et al.
The age of onset of Huntington disease varies greatly from person to person, but most people develop it in their 30s or 40s. Huntington disease is a rare disorder. More than 15,000 Americans currently have the disease, but many more are at risk of developing it.
The genetic risk to children
A person with a Huntington's disease affected parent has a 50% risk of having inherited the Huntington's disease gene. Each child of that person has a 25% chance of inheriting the condition. But this '25%' only applies while the person is untested.
Causes of Huntington's disease
A parent with the Huntington's disease gene has one good copy of the gene and one faulty copy. This means there's a: 50:50 chance that each of their children will develop Huntington's disease - affected children can pass the gene to children they may have.
And if you think about the inheritance of Huntington's disease, it is dominantly inherited, meaning that usually, only one parent has Huntington's disease. And so the risk to the offspring is 50% for each child.
Huntington's disease is currently found in many different countries and ethnic groups around the world. The highest frequencies of HD are found in Europe and countries of European origin, such as the United States and Australia. The lowest documented frequencies of HD are found in Africa, China, Japan, and Finland.
The range of disease duration was between 2 and 17 years, the oldest living to age 91.
Huntington's disease patients have a tendency to choke on food due to a lack of fine motor control (control of small muscles). They often experience enormous increases in appetite and sometimes trying to eat quickly to satisfy urgent hunger can lead to choking.
Being male is the result of a dominant gene. But many of the problems that plague males more often are because of recessive genes on the X chromosome.
Turner syndrome is a female-only genetic disorder that affects about 1 in every 2,000 baby girls. A girl with Turner syndrome only has 1 normal X sex chromosome, rather than the usual 2. This chromosome variation happens randomly when the baby is conceived in the womb.