ABSTRACT
Huntington’s disease (HD) is an inherited neuropsychiatric disorder with a late age of onset. Carriers of the gene for HD generally exhibit no clinical symptoms of the disease until middle age. In every instance at least one family member at risk for HD or the spouse of a diagnosed HD patient was interviewed. As an autosomal dominantly inherited disorder, HD is expected to occur in half the sons and daughters of affected individuals. There is currently no means for detection of carriers prior to the onset of HD symptoms usually in middle age. In the event that an effective method of treatment is developed, early recognition of HD gene carriers by accelerometer tremor measurement could result in control of the disorder prior to substantial neurological damage. In HD a wide spectrum of symptoms in different individuals may have a common underlying cause.
