title: Music therapy in Huntington's disease: a protocol for a multi-center randomized controlled trial.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Huntington's disease is a progressive, neurodegenerative disease with autosomal dominant inheritance, characterized by motor disturbances, cognitive decline and behavioral and psychological symptoms. Since there is no cure, all treatment is aimed at improving quality of life. Music therapy is a non-pharmacological intervention, aiming to improve the quality of life, but its use and efficacy in patients with Huntington's disease has hardly been studied. In this article, a protocol is described to study the effects of music therapy in comparison with a control intervention to improve quality of life through stimulating expressive and communicative skills. By targeting these skills we assume that the social-cognitive functioning will improve, leading to a reduction in behavioral problems, resulting in an overall improvement of the quality of life in patients with Huntington's disease.
  
  
  METHODS
  The study is designed as a multi-center single-blind randomised controlled intervention trial. Sixty patients will be randomised using centre-stratified block-permuted randomisation. Patients will be recruited from four long-term care facilities specialized in Huntington's disease-care in The Netherlands. The outcome measure to assess changes in expressive and communication skills is the Behaviour Observation Scale Huntington and changes in behavior will be assessed by the Problem Behaviour Assesment-short version and by the BOSH. Measurements take place at baseline, then 8, 16 (end of intervention) and 12 weeks after the last intervention (follow-up).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This randomized controlled study will provide greater insight into the effectiveness of music therapy on activities of daily living, social-cognitive functioning and behavior problems by improving expressive and communication skills, thus leading to a better quality of life for patients with Huntington's disease.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  Netherlands Trial Register: NTR4904 , registration date Nov. 15, 2014.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands. m.vanbruggen-rufi@artez.nl.|ArtEZ School of Music, Enschede, Netherlands. m.vanbruggen-rufi@artez.nl.|Atlant Care Group, Apeldoorn, Netherlands. m.vanbruggen-rufi@artez.nl.
authors.forename: Monique
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: van Bruggen-Rufi
authors.affiliation: ArtEZ School of Music, Enschede, Netherlands.|KenVaK, Zuyd University, Heerlen, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Annemieke
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vink
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands.|Topaz Huntington Center Overduin, Katwijk, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Wilco
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Achterberg
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Raymund
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Roos
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006816:Huntington Disease / Q000628:therapy*; D008297:Male; D008609:Mental Status Schedule; D009147:Music Therapy; D009426:Netherlands; D011788:Quality of Life; D012107:Research Design; D016037:Single-Blind Method; D016896:Treatment Outcome
keywords: Behavioral problems; Communicative and expressive skills; Huntington’s disease; Music therapy; Quality of life; Randomized controlled trial