What are the symptoms of huntington's disease?

Movement disorders: Changes in movement with a lack of coordination. You are usually unsteady while walking. As the disease progresses, the jerky, or spastic movements increase, with a decline in mental status and development of psychiatric disorders in the last stages of the disease.

Chorea: Large flailing movements of the limbs are called chorea, and many patients also develop loss of cognitive function (dementia). All of this can create profound disability. There is some treatment to control the chorea, but the disease is not curable, and does have an autosomal dominant heredity, which can be tested.

It varies.: It can include problems with movement (fidgeting, flailing limbs, slowed movements, rigidity, poor balance, difficulty talking or eating, abnormal eye movements), thinking (irritability, untidiness, loss of interest.Slow thinking, impaired intellectual function, memory disturbances), & emotion (depression, bipolar disease, psychosis, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, sexual and sleep disorders, personality change).

Movement & Behavior: The major symptoms are changes in behavior such as hallucinations, irritability, moodiness and psychosis, and abnormal movements including extra facial and limb movements and loss of coordination, dementia, and eventually impairments of speech and swallowing. More information is available from the huntington's disease society of america: www.Hdsa.Org.