Essays on Huntington's Disease

Neurodegenerative Disorder

Introduction Neurodegenerative disorders refer to debilitating health care complications that occur because of slow degeneration of nerves cells. Neurodegeneration process is the progressive deterioration of structure and functionality of neurons in human body systems (Kovacs, 2016, 189). Ideally, neurodegenerative disorders represent the long-standing challenges in the field of basic science and clinical medicine. This is because of the persistence showed by the illnesses despite the unending attempts to adopt solutions to mitigate their health effects and severity on patients. The diseases affect the neurons in the human brain. As a result, it causes instabilities in the brain and spinal ...

In 1872, the 22-year-old George Huntington presented a paper describing an elaborately outlined inheritance pattern of a disease, which during the time was referred to as "chorea." In his paper, which was presented at the Meigs and Mason Academy of Medicine at Ohio, George described all the features of the adult-onset form of the disorder and outlined the disease’s autosomal-dominant pattern of inheritance. Although the mechanism underlying the inheritance pattern of the disease was not understood until the rediscovery of Mendel’s works, his paper was so comprehensive that George Huntington quickly became widely acclaimed. In fact, he ...

Introduction

Huntington’s disease (HD) is an inheritable and neurodegenerative disease. It is characterized by progressive psychiatric, cognitive, and motor symptoms. It is significant to familiarize with the phenotypes since patients can present with one or more symptoms of the disease. Loss of balance and chorea are the first symptoms recognized by the patients. However, the families always notice personality or cognitive changes before first symptoms. The disease is most common in races from northern Europe. This paper is set to discuss the etiology and risk factors, pathophysiological processes, clinical manifestations, complications, as well as diagnosis of Huntington’s disease.

Etiology and Risk Factors

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Dear Grandma,

Our body has tissues and organs that are made up of different types of cells. Each cell contains the deoxyribonucleic acid also known as DNA. This double-stranded DNA is made up of 4 chemical molecules also known as bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C) and thymine (T). In the DNA, A always pairs with T; C always pairs with G. These strands are nothing but sequences of these bases that run really long. So typically a short sequence of DNA if written down in English will read:

AGTCCCGGTTC

TCAGGCCAAG The DNA sequences are 99% alike in all humans, but ...