What are the symptoms of Huntington disease ?
What are the signs and symptoms of Huntington disease? Huntington disease (HD) is a progressive disorder that causes motor, cognitive, and psychiatric signs and symptoms. On average, most people begin developing features of HD between ages 35 and 44. Signs and symptoms vary by stage and may include: Early stage: Behavioral disturbances Clumsiness Moodiness Irritability Paranoia Apathy Anxiety Hallucinations Abnormal eye movements Depression Impaired ability to detect odors Middle stage: Dystonia Involuntary movements Trouble with balance and walking Chorea with twisting and writhing motions Unsteady gait (style of walking) Slow reaction time General weakness Weight loss Speech difficulties Stubbornness Late stage: Rigidity (continual tension of the muscles) Bradykinesia (difficulty initiating and continuing movements) Severe chorea Serious weight loss Inability to speak Inability to walk Swallowing problems Inability to care for oneself There is also a less common, early-onset form of HD which begins in childhood or adolescence. For more information on this form, please visit GARD's juvenile Huntington disease Web page. The Human Phenotype Ontology provides the following list of signs and symptoms for Huntington disease. If the information is available, the table below includes how often the symptom is seen in people with this condition. You can use the MedlinePlus Medical Dictionary to look up the definitions for these medical terms. Signs and Symptoms Approximate number of patients (when available) Abnormality of movement 50% Abnormality of the voice 50% Behavioral abnormality 50% Cerebral cortical atrophy 50% Developmental regression 50% EEG abnormality 50% Hypertonia 50% Rigidity 7.5% Abnormality of eye movement - Autosomal dominant inheritance - Bradykinesia - Chorea - Dementia - Depression - Gliosis - Hyperreflexia - Neuronal loss in central nervous system - Personality changes - The Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO) has collected information on how often a sign or symptom occurs in a condition. Much of this information comes from Orphanet, a European rare disease database. The frequency of a sign or symptom is usually listed as a rough estimate of the percentage of patients who have that feature. The frequency may also be listed as a fraction. The first number of the fraction is how many people had the symptom, and the second number is the total number of people who were examined in one study. For example, a frequency of 25/25 means that in a study of 25 people all patients were found to have that symptom. Because these frequencies are based on a specific study, the fractions may be different if another group of patients are examined. Sometimes, no information on frequency is available. In these cases, the sign or symptom may be rare or common.