British researchers are getting close to pin-pointing when early treatment for Huntington’s disease could be started, it was announced today.
The devastating disease is currently incurable but doctors are hoping for new drug treatments.
People at risk of the disease can readily be identified by genetic testing and doctors believe they can also pin-point the time when someone contracts the disease.
But early studies suggested that the rate of decline for the first two years after early diagnosis was negligible – and that drugs would make no difference.
Experts say new drugs may soon be able to help stop the disease developing.
Now, writing in The Lancet, researchers say a third year of testing has identified how brain scans can show whether the disease is starting to cause damage.
This includes measuring the volume of white matter in the brain.
Researcher Sarah Tabrizi, from University College London, UK, said: "These new tests could be used in future preventative drug trials in individuals who are gene positive for Huntington’s disease but are not yet showing overt motor symptoms.
"These people have the most to gain by initiating treatment early to delay the start of these overt symptoms and give them a high quality of life for a longer period of time."
She added: "A new generation of drugs will be ready for human trials in the very near future. Diagnosis is something of an artificial construct at onset of motor symptoms, and this study now gives us a number of other, more well-defined parameters that correlate with disease progression.
"By extending the reach of clinical trials to include individuals who are currently free of overt symptoms there is a realistic future possibility that treatments in the pipeline can significantly improve the quality of life for patients and families."
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