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Coming soon from the 2013 Huntington's Disease World Congress: Buzzilia!

Jeff Carroll and Ed Wild will be reporting on the hottest science news from the 2013 World Congress on Huntington’s Disease in Rio de Janeiro, from Sunday 15th to Wednesday 18th September, in a special feature we’re calling Buzzilia!

The World Congress on Huntington’s Disease

The World Congress on Huntington’s Disease is the biggest regular meeting of people affected by Huntington’s disease, family members, friends, carers, scientists and health professionals. This year, for the first time ever, it’s being held in Latin America – in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

South American families, especially those in Venezuela, were crucial to the discovery of the genetic cause of HD and the disease remains more common there than elsewhere. In recent years, great strides have been made in Latin America for HD-affected people – including the establishment of the South American HD Network, the Red Latino-Americana de Huntington (RLAH) and a big upsurge in research activity. So it’s great to see the World Congress head there for the first time.

The HD World Congress is a unique opportunity for the global Huntington’s disease community to come together and for people to learn from each other and share news, progress and excitement.

For family members, it’s a great opportunity to hear directly about the latest progress towards treatments for HD, to meet scientists who are working on HD, and to find out what’s working, what’s not and what might be around the corner. Chat to your favorite researcher and thank them – or tell them to hurry up!

For scientists and care professionals, it’s a valuable time to get to know HD family members and hear about their lives. It is incredibly motivating for scientists to meet the people their work is trying to help.

Announcing … Buzzilia!

We’re excited to announce that your HDBuzz editors-in-chief, Dr Jeff Carroll and Dr Ed Wild, will be presenting a nightly feature at the World Congress. In keeping with a now-established tradition of terrible puns – remember Oz Buzz and EuroBuzz? – we’re calling this year’s coverage Buzzilia!

Buzzilia will bring you all the hottest science news from the World Congress, with the HDBuzz ethos: the latest research news – brought to you by scientists – in plain language – for the global HD community.

We’ll be joined by special guests for interviews, news reports and some more light-hearted features that will inform and entertain.

Buzzilia is supported by the World Congress Organizing Committee and our funding partners.

Of course, not everyone can make it to Rio. So to emphasize the truly global nature of the HD Community, we’ll again be using internet and social media to connect with the hundreds of thousands of HD-affected people around the globe.

We’ll be posting news updates every day of the Congress at HDBuzz.net, and full video of our coverage online shortly afterwards. But if you don’t want to miss a thing, follow HDBuzzFeed on Twitter.

We look forward to seeing you in Rio, or having you join us online for a week of exciting news updates from the World Congress.

Latest Research Articles

Regulating repetition: Gaining control of CAG repeats could slow progression of Huntington’s disease

Published date: 30 November, 2023

“Somatic expansion” is a hot topic in Huntington’s disease research. Somatic expansion is a process in which CAG repeats lengthen in some cells during aging. It’s thought to control how early HD symptoms appear. A group of researchers from Toronto, Canada recently identified proteins that may play an important role in regulating this process. Understanding ... Read more

Getting to the Root of Huntington's Disease: A Plant-Based Approach

Published date: 15 October, 2023

Researchers studied a fragment of the Huntington’s disease (HD) protein in plants and found a new way to stop it from forming toxic clumps. A special plant protein that the team identified can prevent harmful buildup in plants as well as in some HD model systems, showing potential for this approach as a possible way ... Read more

Could halting CAG expansions be a new treatment for HD?

Published date: 5 October, 2023

A recent paper from a group at UMass Chan Medical School, spearheaded by Dr. Daniel O'Reilly and led by Dr. Anastasia Khvorova, used genetic strategies to lower a protein other than huntingtin. This time the researchers went after a gene called MSH3. This is a gene that’s been getting a lot of attention in Huntington’s ... Read more

Tipping the balance; new insights into HD genetic modifiers

Published date: 1 September, 2023

Genetic modifiers can influence when HD symptoms begin. Some of these genes encode for different types of molecular machines whose normal job is to repair our DNA when it is broken or damaged. A recently published study from scientists at Thomas Jefferson University uncovers details of how these molecular machines help repair damaged DNA structures ... Read more

Drug to treat movement symptoms of HD approved by FDA

Published date: 22 August, 2023

The vast majority of people with Huntington’s disease experience movement symptoms known as chorea. Valbenazine, also known as INGREZZA, has recently been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), allowing doctors in the USA to prescribe this medicine for Huntington’s disease (HD) chorea. In this article we go through the key points ... Read more

Youthful competitors: young brain cells oust the old

Published date: 8 August, 2023

When you lose something, an easy solution can be to just replace it. But what if the something you’ve lost are cells in the brain? Can they simply be replaced? Some researchers have been working toward this for Huntington’s disease (HD) by injecting new cells into the brains of animal models. A recent publication that ... Read more