A novel imaging ligand as a biomarker for mutant huntingtin-lowering in Huntington's disease

Huntington's disease (HD) is a dominantly inherited neurodegenerative disorder caused by a CAG trinucleotide expansion in the huntingtin (HTT) gene that encodes the pathologic mutant HTT (mHTT) protein with an expanded polyglutamine (PolyQ) tract. While several therapeutic programs targeting mHTT expression have advanced to clinical evaluation, no method is currently available to visualize mHTT levels in the living brain. Here we demonstrate the development of a positron emission tomography (PET) imaging radioligand with high affinity and selectivity for mHTT aggregates. This small molecule radiolabeled with 11C ([11C]CHDI-180R) enables non-invasive monitoring of mHTT pathology in the brain and can track region- and time-dependent suppression of mHTT in response to therapeutic interventions targeting mHTT expression. We further show that therapeutic agents that lower mHTT in the striatum have a functional restorative effect that can be measured by preservation of striatal imaging markers, enabling a translational path to assess the functional effect of mHTT lowering.

Distribution of Huntington’s disease Haplogroups in Indian population

Huntington’s disease (HD), a rare neurodegenerative disorder, is inherited in an autosomal dominant manner, and caused by a pathological trinucleotide expansion at exon1 of the HTT locus. Previous studies have described the haplogroups at the HTT locus that can explain the differences in prevalence of HD. We have selected three informative SNPs (rs762855, rs3856973 and rs4690073) to study these haplogroups in an Indian sample. Our results show that the genotype frequencies are significantly different between cases and controls for these SNPs. More than 90% of both cases and controls belong to Haplogroup A which is the predominant European haplogroup.

Spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy with pseudomyotonia phenomena: a clinical case report

A clinical description of a 28-year-old man with spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy diagnosed on the basis of the CAG-trinucleotide expansion in the gene coding androgen receptor is presented. He exhibited skeletal muscles and tongue fasciculations, gynecomastia, increased serum testosterone and creatine kinase levels. The peculiarities of the case were the gynecomastia under the age of 7, development of fasciculations at the age of 11 and appearance of hard muscle stiffness with delayed muscle relaxation after voluntary contraction at the age of 15, which resembled typical myotonia. Electromyography showed few signs of mild without myotonic discharge, contrasting with giant motor unit potentials and reduced recruitment. The cause of myotonia-like symptom without myotonic discharge as a feature of skeletal muscles disorder is discussed with the modern view of spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy as a multisystem genetic pathology.