Imagine if you had just spent the last 15 years nursing your own mother through her demise at the hand of Huntington’s disease. A genetic neurological disorder of the central nervous system that sees neurons in the brain degenerate. This degeneration causes uncontrolled movements, loss of intellectual facilities and emotional disturbance. Being an autosomal dominant genetic disorder you would have a 50/50 chance of inheriting the gene yourself and knowing everyone who inherits the gene will at some stage develop the disease, would you take a test to find out for certain if you had Huntington’s disease? Would you want to be tested, knowing there is no effective cure or treatmen? If you did find you had the DNA mutation which causes the disease, would you choose to have children? Would you risk knowingly putting your children at such a potential risk for a Huntington’s disease fated life? Or would you chose to have children in the hope that scientific research would progress and find a cure before your child would develop symptoms?
A recent study published in Science on January 15 outlines an exciting new breakthrough, which may bring a cure for Huntington’s disease just that one step closer. The paper brings to light prominent parallels between the expansion of the repeat pattern in the DNA of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana and those seen in the DNA of Huntington’s sufferers.
Previously difficult to study in humans due to the long life spans involved, the plant model allows scientists to study the DNA mutations and their changes over several generations. This ‘Opens up a whole new array of possibilities for future research, some of which could have potential implications for humans,’ Dr Balasubramanian stated.
With Huntington’s disease haunting your family, would you put all your hope into a plant? Only time will tell the outcome of this new research.
By 42082387
References
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/136010.php
http://www.uihealthcare.com/topics/medicaldepartments/neurology/huntingtonsdisease/genetics.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65xf1olEpQM&feature=related
