title: Huntington's Disease and Striatal Signaling.
abstract: Huntington's Disease (HD) is the most frequent neurodegenerative disease caused by an expansion of polyglutamines (CAG). The main clinical manifestations of HD are chorea, cognitive impairment, and psychiatric disorders. The transmission of HD is autosomal dominant with a complete penetrance. HD has a single genetic cause, a well-defined neuropathology, and informative pre-manifest genetic testing of the disease is available. Striatal atrophy begins as early as 15 years before disease onset and continues throughout the period of manifest illness. Therefore, patients could theoretically benefit from therapy at early stages of the disease. One important characteristic of HD is the striatal vulnerability to neurodegeneration, despite similar expression of the protein in other brain areas. Aggregation of the mutated Huntingtin (HTT), impaired axonal transport, excitotoxicity, transcriptional dysregulation as well as mitochondrial dysfunction, and energy deficits, are all part of the cellular events that underlie neuronal dysfunction and striatal death. Among these non-exclusive mechanisms, an alteration of striatal signaling is thought to orchestrate the downstream events involved in the cascade of striatal dysfunction.
authors: UMRS 952, INSERM, UMR 7224, CNRS Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris-6 Paris, France.
authors: Emmanuel
authors: E
authors: Roze
authors: Emma
authors: E
authors: Cahill
authors: Elodie
authors: E
authors: Martin
authors: Cecilia
authors: C
authors: Bonnet
authors: Peter
authors: P
authors: Vanhoutte
authors: Sandrine
authors: S
authors: Betuing
authors: Jocelyne
authors: J
authors: Caboche