It wasn't Witchcraft--It was Huntington Disease!

It wasn't Witchcraft--It was Huntington Disease!

Huntington disease (HD) is an autosomal-dominant, incurable, progressive disorder that manifests with chorea and behavioral and cognitive impairment. The disease usually occurs during the fourth or fifth decade of life; however, it may present at any age. Clinical suspicion is confirmed by genetic testing. Death occurs, on average, 15 to 20 years after the onset of symptoms. Here we report abou...

It was logical but was it the whole truth?

Calcific aortic stenosis (AS) was initially characterized as a degenerative process (disorder) because of a tendency to describe any disorder that was not well understood and often occurred in the ‘elderly’ as degenerative. In the last ‘15–20’ years, the observation of the presence of risk factors for arterial atherosclerosis in patients with calcific AS, the production of aortic valve calcific...

Marine sediments tell it like it was.

W e live in a constantly changing environment. Although some changes are natural and therefore beyond our control, there is no question that many anthropogenic activities have dramatically altered our planet. The ‘‘human footprint’’ is now discernable around the globe, so much so that Crutzen (1) proposed a new geological epoch (the Anthropocene) to delineate the recent human-dominated era of E...

Huntington disease: How many repeats does it take?

Energy deficit in Huntington disease: why it matters.

Huntington disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disease with complete penetrance. Although the understanding of the cellular mechanisms that drive neurodegeneration in HD and account for the characteristic pattern of neuronal vulnerability is incomplete, defects in energy metabolism, particularly mitochondrial function, represent a common thread in studies of HD pathogenesis ...