By Grace Moinet
Has Huntington’s disease finally been cured? Well, although it isn’t a full cure, it’s been successfully treated for the first time. For background, Huntington’s disease is one of the most fatal, even though it isn’t very common, 3-7 people have it for every 100,000 globally. This disease is, or was 100% fatal. It’s a very slow working disease, and it’s very common to die within 10-30 years after the first symptom.
This treatment is very important because this disease can be easily inherited. If one of your parents has this, you automatically have a 50% chance of inheriting it. Huntington’s can affect you physically and emotionally, and it causes brain cells to slowly lose their function until it’s lost completely.
The treatment was discovered through a trial with 29 patients, involving a 12-18 hour brain surgery. One less positive addition is that the treatment is very expensive, making it less accessible. According to BBC news, “This therapy uses a cutting edge genetic medicine combining gene therapy and gene silencing technologies” Even though it may be expensive, it’s “Just the beginning and there are many new therapies to still be discovered,” which was said by Prof Tabrizi. So, Huntington’s disease may not be cured, but this discovery is a big breakthrough and will likely lead to that in the future.
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