Surprise finding sheds light on what causes Huntington’s disease, a devastating fatal brain disorder

Scientists are unraveling the mystery of what triggers Huntington’s disease, a devastating and fatal hereditary disorder that strikes in the prime of life, causing nerve cells in parts of the brain to break down and die. “The conundrum in our field has been: Why do you have a genetic disorder that manifests later in life if the gene is present at conception?” said Dr. Mark Mehler, who directs the Institute for Brain Disorders and Neural Regeneration at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and was not involved in the research. Scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, McLean Hospital in Massachusetts and Harvard Medical School studied brain tissue donated by 53 people with Huntington’s and 50 without it, analyzing half a million cells. “The longer the repeats, the earlier in life the onset will happen,” said neuroscience researcher Sabina Berretta, one of the study’s senior authors. Though there are no guarantees this would stave off Huntington’s, McCarroll said “many companies are starting or expanding programs to try to do this.” —--- The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.