Huntington’s disease [George S. Huntington, American physician, 1851–1916] , a rare abnormal hereditary condition characterized by chronic progressive chorea and mental deterioration that results in dementia. An individual afflicted with the condition usually shows the first signs in the fourth decade of life and dies within 15 years. It is transmitted as an autosomal trait and becomes progressively worse in severity as the trinucleotide repeats grow in successive generations. There is no known effective treatment, but symptoms can be relieved with medication.
