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Welcome to HDBuzz! This special page is for people who are new to Huntington’s disease, or new to the world of HD research.

Reading the articles linked here will help you pick up the basics of what Huntington’s disease is, and get up to speed with some of the most promising things scientists are doing to come up with effective treatments for HD.

Huntington’s disease – the bare essentials

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  • Our Science FAQ covers the very basics of HD and introduces some ideas about why we need research to find treatments.
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About HDBuzz

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  • Our HDBuzz FAQ and People Page explain what HDBuzz is, and the people behind it.
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  • And our Funding page explains where we get our money from and how we make sure HDBuzz is neutral and reliable.
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The most promising possible treatments

Some of the world’s top scientists are working round the clock to develop treatments for Huntington’s disease – and real progress is being made. Dozens of possible treatments are being worked on, and every day a successful treatment gets one day closer. Here are some leading approaches being tested in the clinic.

Huntingtin lowering Huntington’s disease is caused by a faulty protein, and huntingtin lowering drugs tell cells to make less of that protein. Huntingtin lowering is sometimes called “gene silencing”. Right now many scientists believe it is our best hope for an effective treatment. Read about it in our Gene Silencing Primer.

Other approaches to addressing HD biology and HD symptoms include preserving the connections between nerve cells, enhancing certain types of signals in the brain, stopping CAG repeats from lengthening, and treating problems with thinking and movement. Read more about these approaches here.

Living with HD

Some of our most popular articles offer the latest information about day-to-day issues faced by Huntington’s disease family members.

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  • ‘Making Babies’ explains how people at risk of HD can use assisted fertility methods to have HD-free kids – even if the would-be parents don’t want to be tested themselves.
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  • Our article on the ‘Genetic Gray Area’ of HD sheds light on the often confusing topic of people whose HD genetic test result isn’t quite positive or negative, but somewhere in the middle.
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  • Many HD-affected people are frustrated by a lack of interest or expertise from care professionals. Take a look at our article on Closing the Care Gap to find out about the expert guidance available to professionals – why not show it to the professionals looking after you?
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Taking action

Successful treatments to prevent, slow, reverse or cure Huntington’s disease will arrive more quickly if more people help out. Here’s what we recommend:

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  • Sign up for Enroll-HD, the largest global study of HD family members. Anyone from an HD family can sign up and you don’t need to have had a genetic test to do so. A short annual assessment involving questionnaires, thinking tests and a blood sample is all it takes to help us understand HD and put you in pole position for clinical trials.
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  • In the USA, look at the HDSA’s TrialFinder, which will tell you what drug trials and other research studies are going on near you.
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  • In Canada, look at the HSC’s Clinical Trial Locations page.
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  • In Europe, check out the EHA and the Euro-HD Network.
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  • In Australia, check out the HDNA’s Map-HD Registry.
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  • If you are affected by Juvenile HD, Check out HDYO’s JOIN-HD Registry.
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  • Elsewhere, the International Huntington Association will help you get involved.
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Getting behind the headlines

A key mission of HDBuzz is to help our readers sort out the hope from the hype. News and blog stories can sometimes give a false impression of how promising a particular treatment is, or how soon it could deliver for HD-affected people.

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  • Our Ten Golden Rules article suggests ten simple steps to help you draw hope from a science news story, without being disappointed by impossible promises.
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Meanwhile, there are many areas of science being explored as part of the larger “HD research pipeline” which are not yet ready to pursue in humans. Sometimes these are interesting and potentially useful, but sometimes they generate headlines that aren’t necessarily able to live up to the hype. Here are some examples of recent articles about broad topics, “basic science,” and techniques that are moving HD research forward.

The very latest

We regularly produce reports from major scientific meetings and conferences. They’re a great way to get an overview of all the hottest Huntington’s disease research. Catch up on the latest conference news here.

Make yourself at home!

HDBuzz is designed so that each article makes sense on its own and gives you all the background info you need. So don’t be afraid to explore.

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  • Each article has a learn more box, containing links to original sources and background information.
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  • Every article has a topics box so you can easily find content on a particular subject.
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If there’s something about HD research you’d like explained but can’t find here, feel free to use the ‘Suggest an article’ box on the front page.

And to make sure you don’t miss anything exciting, follow us on Twitter or Facebook, or sign up for Email updates

Welcome aboard. We’re glad you found us.

Latest Research Articles

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

Updates from PTC Therapeutics and uniQure on their huntingtin-lowering trials

Published date: 21 June, 2023

On 21st June, both PTC Therapeutics and uniQure shared data from their respective clinical trials, both testing huntingtin-lowering as an approach to treat HD, but with different types of therapies. In this article we go through the data they each presented, what it all means and the next steps the companies will be taking. Treating ... Read more