The story of George Huntington and his disease

• Published in: Annals of the Indian Academy of Neurology Vol. 19; no. 1; pp. 25 - 28
• Main Author: Bhattacharyya, KalyanB
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: India Medknow Publications and Media Pvt. Ltd 01.01.2016; Medknow Publications & Media Pvt. Ltd; Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd; Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications
• Subjects: Gusella; History of Medicine; Huntington; Huntington, George Sumner; Physicians; trinucleotide repeat length; Wexler; India; trinucleotide repeat length; Wexler; Huntington; Gusella
• ISSN: 0972-2327; 1998-3549
• DOI: 10.4103/0972-2327.175425

George Huntington described some families with choreiform movements in 1872 in the United States of America and since then many such families have been described in other parts of the world and works on the genetics of the disease have brought new vistas in the understanding of the disease. In 1958, Americo Negrette, a young Venezuelan physician observed similar subjects in the vicinity of Lake Maracaibo which was presented by his co-worker, Ramon Avilla Giron at New York in 1972 when United States of America had been commemorating the centenary year of Huntington's disease. Nancy Wexler, a psychoanalyst, whose mother had been suffering from the disease attended the meeting and organized a research team to Venezuela and they systematically studied more than 18,000 individuals in order to work out a common pedigree. They identified the genetic locus of the disease in the short arm of chromosome 4 and observed that it was a trinucleotide repeat disorder.