Savoring 20 years of my Huntington’s disease blog

 

This month I am celebrating the 20 years of this blog.

 

I began At Risk for Huntington’s Disease on January 10, 2005, wanting to “squeeze as much life into my days as possible” before experiencing the debilitating HD symptoms that led to my mother’s death a year later. Because I lived in what I called the “terrible and lonely HD closet” – fearful of genetic discrimination – I used the pseudonym “Gene Veritas,” “the truth in my genes.” That name reflected the fact that I had tested positive for the HD gene in 1999.

 

My mother died at 68, after two decades of debilitating symptoms, which was very painful to watch.

 

I turned 65 last month. By this age, I had expected to have full-blown HD, which would have left me unable to work, drive, or write.

 

But, according to my latest neurological checkup, I don’t yet have apparent HD symptoms!

 

In general, the more abnormal the gene, the earlier the age of disease onset. My mother and I have the same gene mutation, suggesting a similar disease path. However, although my mother’s symptoms started in her late 40s, one or more modifier genes, the functions of which were discovered a decade ago, have perhaps delayed my disease onset.

 

This article is number 336. Each day of good health is a blessing.

 

Gene Veritas (aka Kenneth P. Serbin) with his blog (photo by Regina Serbin)

 

The impact

 

In 2012, I exited the HD closet by publishing an essay – and using my real name, Kenneth P. Serbin – in The Chronicle of Higher Education. It was titled “Racing Against the Genetic Clock.” Going public opened new vistas of advocacy and enabled me to blog with greater transparency.

 

In December 2022. I published a detailed analysis of the blog in “Striving for a Realistic and Unapologetic View of Huntington’s Disease” in the Journal of Huntington’s Disease. It described how the blog has helped give voice to the HD community by exploring the major challenges faced by HD families, becoming a key reference for those families, and chronicling the quest to defeat the disorder.

 

As I observed, the blog has also “helped document the new and harrowing experience of living in the gray zone between a genetic test result and disease onset.”

 

At Risk for HD has addressed multiple topics including advocacy, caregiving, family trauma, coping strategies, genetic testing, discrimination, leaving the HD closet, participation in research and clinical trials, as well as religion, faith, and spirituality.

 

When my mother was diagnosed with HD in 1995 – two years after the discovery of the gene – little hope existed for treatments that could slow the progression of HD. However, in the past decade, advances in academic labs and biopharma firms have led to key clinical trials that show potential for affecting the course of HD and perhaps even a cure (click here to read more).

Telling the story of those complex developments has become a major focus of At Risk for HD. With the growing number of research projects, I have necessarily highlighted those that appear closest to producing actual drugs such as the Roche gene silencing program, which I have covered extensively.

 

In 2021, the first Roche trial showed lack of efficacy. In 2023 Roche started enrolling volunteers in a more focused trial to see if the drug might work at least in some patients. Other key trials are in progress or being planned.

 

Hoping for an HD-free world, savoring life

 

Writing the entries of At Risk for HD has given me great meaning and purpose, which researchers have identified as increasing well-being and positively impacting the course of the disease.

 

For now, I plan to continue blogging as long health permits – and until the quest for a cure is complete.

 

In February, I hope to attend the crucial 20th Annual HD Therapeutics Conference at the Parker Hotel in Palm Springs, CA. The conference is sponsored by CHDI Foundation, Inc., the largest private funder of HD research.

 

In 2011, I delivered the conference keynote speech before 250 scientists, physicians, and biopharma reps – a decisive step towards my complete exit from the closet in 2012 and chronicled in this blog.

 

I have described the conference as the “Super Bowl of HD research,” covered in many blog articles and videos of scientists (see, for example, this one).

 

With the rest of the HD community, I hope for the announcement of effective treatments. I very much look forward to reporting on progress.

 

Just as important is the need to savor life – another key lesson of my journey with the HD community, this blog, and my friends and family.

New book by longtime advocate describes Milton Wexler’s incomparable contributions to Huntington’s disease research and beyond

 

A new book portrays the largely unexplored personal and psychological context of the quest to understand and defeat Huntington’s disease: a biographical memoir of Milton Wexler (1908-2007), the founder of the Hereditary Disease Foundation (HDF) and key mover in the discovery of the HD gene.

 

In late 2022, Wexler’s daughter, historian Alice Wexler, published The Analyst: A Daughter’s Memoir (Columbia University Press). She is a longtime Huntington’s disease advocate and chronicler of the cause.

 

The Analyst adds unique dimensions to HD history, building on Alice’s groundbreaking work. In 1995 she authored Mapping Fate: a memoir of family, risk, and genetic research (first published by Random House and Times Books, then reissued by the University of California Press). In 2008, she wrote The Woman Who Walked into the Sea: Huntington’s and the Making of a Genetic Disease (Yale University Press).

 

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the discovery of the huntingtin gene, announced in March 1993. Through the HDF and in collaboration with a global team of scientists, Milton and his neuropsychologist daughter Nancy, Alice’s sister, spearheaded the hunt for the gene, as recounted in Mapping Fate. In The Woman Who Walked into the Sea, Alice explored the social and medical history of HD in the 19th and 20th centuries, helping explain the stigma HD families still face.

 

The sisters’ mother Leonore was diagnosed with HD at the age of 53 in 1968. That led Milton to immediately start the HDF, which focused on the development of treatments.

 

In 1993 the discovery of huntingtin “immediately transformed Huntington’s research,” Alice writes in The Analyst. “Suddenly it was possible for researchers to make animal and cell models and study how the gene worked at the cellular and molecular level. They could test drugs and other molecules in mice and sheep, fish and flies, as well as in human beings.”

 

Milton was “ecstatic and also relieved,” Alice recalls. “We even allowed ourselves to imagine that a treatment, and possibly a cure, might be on the horizon.” HDF-sponsored researchers and other scientists around the globe are still striving to achieve that goal.

 

 

Meeting’s life’s difficult challenges

 

Drawing on access to her father’s extensive personal correspondence, her diary, and archival sources enabled Alice, with decades of hindsight, to present her father’s story – in which the fight against HD became his life mission – in intimate detail.

 

Describing Milton, Alice is meticulous, often critical, but always loving – a reflection of the complex relationship of a highly successful professional with daughters that he wanted the best for and whose lives he fought for. She adds a valuable feminist perspective, for example, interpreting her father’s friendships by analyzing masculinity and male intimacy in the 1950s.

 

In addition to Milton’s incomparable contributions to HD research, The Analyst depicts key aspects of American life in the second half of the 20th century. It delves into Jewish life in Brooklyn, which spurred Milton’s ambitions, taking him to Kansas and then to Los Angeles.

 

Portraying her father’s main career as a psychoanalyst, Alice helps to rescue the history of a field that has lost relevance with the emergence of other forms of therapy, though it continues as an intellectual field. Milton saw great value in psychoanalysis’s way of helping people understand their emotions but he increasingly practiced more direct forms of therapy, focused on the here-and-now. As he put it, “insight alone does not change behavior.”

 

Alice demonstrates how much of Milton's early career trying to understand and treat schizophrenia helped him to confront this other knotty problem, HD.

 

In an appendix, The Analyst lists “sayings of Milton Wexler” – including a 1998 note to a President Bill Clinton in crisis – regarding challenges such as the loss of a child, self-defeat, depression, personal identity, loneliness, and risk for a disease such as HD.

 

Milton’s embrace of talk therapy is a key reminder for HD families overwhelmed by the disease's  many social and personal challenges that help is available, and that individual and family therapy can make a difference. He believed that people should not have to struggle on their own.

 

In Los Angeles, Milton became a therapist for many in the arts and entertainment – a practice that he parlayed into significant donations for the HDF.

 

(Click here to read more about my own journey with psychoanalysis as an aid to fighting HD.)

 

‘The nightmare is the children’

 

With new material and perspective, Alice expands on the difficult moments described in Mapping Fate regarding  Leonore’s diagnosis, Milton’s deep fears that his daughters would be affected, and his  “frantic search for information” about HD and scientific contacts that in a matter of weeks spurred the concept of the HDF.

 

Leonore’s diagnosis and HD were “the great poison in my life,” Milton wrote his brother Henry in May 1968 in a letter uncovered by Alice. “But the nightmare is the children.[…] For me there is only dread in the air.”

 

Milton divorced Leonore but nevertheless cared for her impeccably and guaranteed her financial security. Leonore died in 1978 at 63, ten years after her diagnosis..

 

Providing intellectual fuel

 

With his background in psychology and prior experience as an attorney, Milton advocated for a multidisciplinary approach to solving HD and other neurological disorders. He championed the interplay of psychoanalysis and neuroscience in a move critical for HD research. He also grasped the growing importance of molecular genetics and its potential value for Huntington’s.

 

From this perspective Milton developed unique HDF workshops involving informal, spontaneous discussion – as opposed to dry scientific presentations with slides – as the main driver of the search for the HD gene and the quest for treatments. The first took place in 1971. Held in hotel rooms or at universities, these gatherings typically involved 15 to 20 participants.

 

As Alice reports, Milton believed that real creativity resulted from “casual conversation and carefree association among people in the same or related disciplines.”

 

While finding prestigious veteran scientists for HDF’s advisory board, Milton recruited younger researchers, including women, as the organization’s intellectual fuel.

 

As Alice observes, the HDF formed part of a trend in which “philanthropy assumed an increasingly influential role in funding science and meeting social needs.” Contributions to the HDF swelled. It established an endowment to fund future workshops and critical research grants.

 

The challenges of genetic testing

 

Alice reflects on her family’s monumental role in finding the gene and also the irony that neither she nor her sister chose to get the genetic test – a test which “opened a Pandora’s box of legal, social, and ethical challenges and raised many personal questions for Nancy and me.”

 

The test developed shortly after the 1993 discovery of huntingtin enabled 100 percent accuracy in detecting the HD mutation. Prior to this, research had established that each child of an affected parent has a 50-50 chance of inheriting that mutation. As Alice showed in The Woman Who Walked into the Sea, deep stigma and discrimination increased around HD in the 1900s.

 

“None of us considered the possibility of the genetic test to resolve the uncertainty,” Alice writes, referring to the time when she began noticing subtle changes in Nancy. “For all our knowledge of psychology, we turned to denial, that most primitive of defenses. We worried, we wondered, and then we denied. It simply could not be.”

 

Indeed, to this day, only about ten percent of persons at risk for HD choose to be tested.

 

At 81, Alice has not developed symptoms. In 2020, Nancy revealed her HD diagnosis to the New York Times. At 78, she bravely struggles with HD symptoms yet keeps abreast of the latest scientific developments. She now works with a writer on her memoir.

 

Solidarity and hope

 

Along with Mapping Fate and The Woman Who Walked into the Sea, Alice’s warm portrayal of her father in The Analyst shows how he helped the HD community advance in understanding the disorder and seek anxiously awaited treatments to slow, stop, or reverse the disease.

 

Milton lived a full, fascinating, and challenging life, dying peacefully in 2007 at age 98, at Alice and Nancy’s side. In multiple ways, he serves as a model – especially for the idea that when faced with an enormous and difficult challenge, becoming an activist can be the best form of  therapy.

 

The legacy of the discovery of huntingtin, as well as HDF’s scientific leadership, help build solidarity and hope for a better future for HD and all other neurodegenerative diseases.

 

 

Milton Wexler flanked by daughters Nancy (left) and Alice in 1992 (photo by Mariana Cook)

A veteran neurologist’s book offers tools for navigating the ‘turbulent world’ of Huntington’s disease

 

In the fight against any disease, affected individuals and health professionals can arm themselves with an invaluable tool: detailed, cutting-edge knowledge about a condition’s medical and social impact.

 

For the Huntington’s disease community and related disorders, Thomas Bird, M.D., has made a key contribution with his book Can You Help Me? Inside the Turbulent World of Huntington Disease, published last year (Oxford University Press).

 

A retired neurologist who has observed more than 1,000 individuals with HD, Dr. Bird has produced one of the most important – and most accessible – introductions to this devastating disorder. Can You Help Me? will remain relevant for years.

 

Dr. Bird is an Emeritus Professor of Neurology and Medical Genetics at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. His career spanned more than 40 years, including pioneering work in the field of clinical neurogenetics (diagnosing and evaluating hereditary nervous system disorders). His patients included sufferers of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), and other severe, chronic brain conditions.

 

“I have been […] constantly amazed, puzzled, distressed and impressed by the trials and tribulations of these families coping with it,” Dr. Bird writes of Huntington’s. (As with some in neighboring Canada and elsewhere, he calls it “Huntington disease.”) “Dealing with HD has been so moving, so unsettling and so challenging for me that I felt compelled to write about it.”

 

“Can you help me?” a desperate HD-affected man wrote Dr. Bird from the state penitentiary in 1980 seeking medical assistance. That question reverberated in Dr. Bird’s encounters with many other HD people and their families and caregivers.

 

With non-technical, limpid prose, Dr. Bird tells the full story of HD’s wide-ranging medical, socioeconomic, and legal implications through a series of poignant vignettes, based on hundreds of HD cases. He changed identifying information to preserve patient privacy, and in some cases created composites of two or three different individuals.

 

Can You Help Me? will ring familiar to veterans of the HD cause, but it also offers new revelations and insights about HD’s impact. Also, it provides an excellent primer for families new to HD.

 

 

Key lessons about bioethical challenges

 

Many of the stories in Can You Help Me? center on the bioethical challenges faced by HD families, such as the complex ramifications of genetic testing.

 

Dr. Bird retells the story of a deeply troubled young man from an HD family killed by the police after a life of drug use and many clashes with the law – anti-social behavior perhaps resulting from the disease. The man’s aunt pleaded with Dr. Bird to have the coroner confirm the man’s HD status, because he had a three-year-old daughter for whom the test result would someday hold great relevance. Divorced, the man had lost contact with the mother.

 

“Needless to say, this was uncharted territory for us,” Dr. Bird writes of his clinical team. “The appropriate legal or ethical aspects of this case were not clear to me, but I called the University Hospital genetics lab and explained the situation.” On Dr. Bird’s orders, the lab performed the test.

 

The test demonstrated that the man indeed did have HD – “another burden” for the extended family, as Dr. Bird writes.

 

“To this day, I do not know if we followed the correct strategy in trying to help this family,” he concludes. It seemed like “quick thinking” to ask the coroner to save a sample of the dead man’s blood for HD testing, he observes. But many questions remained, including when and how to tell the girl of her at-risk status, he adds.

 

Dr. Bird believed that he might encounter the family again, when the little girl had grown up.

 

Dr. Thomas Bird (book jacket photo by Chang En Yu)

 

No ‘typical’ patient

 

In an appendix, Dr. Bird provides an overview of the genetics of HD and the genetic testing process. In general, as I noted in a previous article, Dr. Bird’s book has helped move the HD field from a traditional, more limited kind of genetic counseling to broader “genetic education.”

 

Can You Help Me? reflects on many other key issues for the HD community.

 

He offers valuable insight into the challenges faced by health professionals working with HD patients, as exemplified in the story of a patient clinic who shot himself. “Could we have done more?” Dr. Bird asks. “These situations are heavy burdens for everyone to bear.”

 

Dr. Bird’s vignettes underscore another crucial point in line with the latest medical and scientific research into the disease: there is no “typical” HD patient, as symptoms manifest uniquely in each case.

 

Notably, Dr. Bird does not describe HD as being like a combination of other diseases such as AD and PD, a shorthand some in the HD community use. Dr. Bird instead compares HD to these and other conditions, thus adding vital context.

 

Dr. Bird also emphasizes the need to end the false dichotomy between psychiatric “mental” diseases like schizophrenia and “brain” diseases like HD. Both originate in the brain, he points out, and both cause “mental illness.” Psychiatry and neurology should intersect more, he argues.

 

A contribution to the history of HD

 

In researching the book, Dr. Bird did important historical legwork. For instance, he painstakingly tracked down important episodes such as the use of lobotomies as an attempt to treat HD.

 

“It is estimated that 50,000 lobotomies were performed in this country between 1938 and 1955,” Dr. Bird writes. “Since persons with HD were often institutionalized and lobotomies were common, it is likely that many of these operations were performed on patients with HD.”

 

Although the procedures on HD people were “not easy to document,” Dr. Bird finally found evidence by examining medical texts. In all, Dr. Bird estimates that “perhaps more than 100” people with HD had the operation. It is not currently recommended for HD.

 

A ‘Princess in Pink’

 

Although many vignettes are gut-wrenching, Can You Help Me? also highlights the sometimes-brighter side of the HD story, such as individuals with late onset, mild symptoms, and productive lives.

 

That message holds two-fold meaning for me as an asymptomatic 61-year-old HD gene carrier who saw his mother develop the disease in her late 40s and die at 68.

 

First, I remember how fortunate I am to have reached this stage without symptoms.

 

Secondly, as a writer and advocate, it reminds me that, no matter how badly the disease has turned people like my mother into shadows of themselves, we should see them as humans struggling with disabling symptoms.

 

A caring community can seek to alleviate some of that burden.

 

One of my favorite stories from Can You Help Me? spotlights the “Princess in Pink,” Bobbi, a little girl who, although afflicted with juvenile HD, maintained her cheerfulness.

 

Bobbi’s fifth-grade teacher, Miss Perry, “decided to be proactive,” Dr. Bird writes. “She wanted to make Bobbi more comfortable in the classroom and educate her other students about Bobbi’s disease and how to relate to persons with disabilities.”

 

The class created the “Princess Project” to discuss HD and create a booklet ­– with a pink cover and a picture of Bobbi wearing a pink crown – about Bobbi and her condition. The classmates wrote perceptive and compassionate entries and also made drawings of Bobbi.

 

“It was a learning experience for everyone, including the adults,” Dr. Bird recalls.

 

Sadly, by age 15, Bobbi’s conditioned worsened, requiring a feeding tube, a frequent end-of-life measure for HD patients. She died in a hospice setting. Several of her old classmates attended the memorial service, where they fondly remembered Bobbi, Dr. Bird writes.

 

A resounding ‘yes’ in wanting to help

 

Can You Help Me? is one of the best and most important books about HD. It builds on the work of historian Alice Wexler, in particular her book The Woman Who Walked into the Sea, which uncovers many of the prejudices associated with HD (click here to read my review).

 

Dr. Bird has provided us with a deeply rich documentation of life in the HD trenches.

 

The title Can You Help Me? asks a question that I and so many other HD family members have posed when confronted with the frightening prospects of HD. (It also holds great value for people in the AD, PD, and other neurological disease communities.)

 

“Sometimes we can help a great deal, sometimes we can only help a little, and sometimes we just muddle through as best we can, navigating our way between suffering and harm,” Dr. Bird concludes, noting briefly that research towards treatments “heralds better days ahead for the world of HD.”

 

Fortunately, for the HD community, Dr. Bird’s book indicates a resounding “yes” regarding the desire by him and so many other professionals to alleviate the suffering caused by HD.

 

(For an interview of Dr. Bird about the book, click here).

Wonder if you’ll get Huntington’s disease? Preparing for the big, ‘intensely personal’ decision to undergo predictive testing

One of the most daunting challenges facing families affected by Huntington’s disease involves genetic testing.

Huntington’s is a 100-percent genetically caused disease, and it now can be foreseen – but not yet cured or treated. All humans have the huntingtin gene, which is essential for life. HD’s devastating, ultimately deadly symptoms are caused by a specific mutation (called a “CAG repeat expansion”) in the gene. Definitive testing for HD became available after the historic discovery of the gene in 1993.

Because every child of an affected HD parent has a 50-50 chance of inheriting the expanded gene, the mere decision to test is often frightful. A positive test result for the expansion means not only that the tested person will develop HD, but carries an added burden: the knowledge that both immediate and extended family members are also at risk of carrying the expansion.

Three scenarios

A person showing no symptoms, or suspecting symptoms, undergoes a predictive test, that is, to see whether the individual carries the expansion and therefore might have HD or later develop it. (Diagnostic testing confirms whether a person already displaying symptoms has HD. Prenatal testing determines whether a fetus or embryo carries the expansion.)

These three scenarios were poignantly portrayed in the July 3 ABC News feature “Living with Huntington’s Disease.” The 15-minute program focused on the stories of Scott and Kelsey Porter and Justin Furstenberg, who received his test result on camera (starkly reminiscent of the film The Lion’s Mouth Opens.)

The report’s detailed, deeply personal rendering of the genetic testing process also illustrated how HD families rely on supportive genetic counseling and psychological and medical assistance – as well as solid scientific information – to navigate the many challenges involved.

Scott and Kelsey Porter in a Huntington's Disease Society of America video

According to recommended guidelines, individuals like the at-risk Kelsey must prepare for this procedure by speaking to a genetic counselor and a mental health professional, and should have a support person (such as a spouse or close friend) physically present throughout the process. For testing in the United States, this “protocol” was established by the Huntington’s Disease Society of America (HDSA). It was most recently updated in 2016. Testing centers should do the utmost to ensure confidentiality, especially since news of a positive test can risk changing perceptions in the workplace and elsewhere, even if there are new guarantees against genetic discrimination.

Testing centers often intentionally slow the testing process, so that there is time for the individual to reconsider the decision to be tested, to think about the potential downside of testing, and to prepare for the impact of the result. Because of survivor’s guilt and other psychological factors, a negative test result can also prove traumatic and disruptive to a person’s relationships with family and friends.

In my quarter century of attending the local monthly HDSA support group and advocating for the HD cause, the topic of predictive genetic testing and its many implications has come up regularly. My own family faced all three modes of tests over five years: my mother’s positive diagnostic test in 1995, my positive predictive test in 1999, and my daughter’s negative prenatal test in late 1999/early 2000. (Click here for details of my family’s fight against HD.)

Based on these experiences and my study of the many related issues, this article provides an overview of key steps and resources for people preparing for HD testing, in particular the predictive type.

Helpful HDSA resources

HDSA, in addition to its genetic testing protocol, provides a brochure to HD families, Genetic Testing Huntington’s Disease, that in simple language answers basic questions about the disease, testing procedures, and resources.

The brochure emphasizes a cardinal rule that I learned early in my family’s journey with HD, and which I have repeated to other HD family members coming to grips with disease for the first time:

“The decision to undergo genetic testing is an intensely personal one that cannot be taken lightly. Testing should never be forced on an at-risk individual. There are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers. Each individual will have to take his/her own circumstances into consideration before making the decision.”

The HDSA family guide to genetic testing (copyright, HDSA)

The HDSA website furnishes valuable information on “genetic testing and your rights,” including the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA). As explained on the site, GINA prohibits “health insurance companies and group health plans from denying coverage or charging a higher premium based on genetic information.” It also “prohibits employers from using an employee’s genetic information to discriminate when making employment decisions about hiring, firing, promotion, or terms of employment.”

In chapter 2 of HDSA’s A Physician’s Guide to the Management of Huntington’s Disease, leading HD specialist Martha Nance, M.D., provides additional critical information about testing and counseling. The chapter includes a detailed medical discussion of HD genetics.

A diagnosis of HD “affects the entire extended family,” Dr. Nance writes. “The person who is diagnosed with HD grieves not only for himself, but also for his at-risk children, and a young adult child caring for an affected parent understands that the parent’s disease could one day affect him.”

Dr. Nance stresses the importance of “accurate information” necessary for families to make “informed decisions” about genetic testing and family, financial, and life planning. Unfortunately, even decades after the discovery of the gene, “misinformation and misunderstandings” about HD genetics are still common, she notes.

(You can also watch a panel discussion titled “Looking to the Future: Life After Testing,” held at HDSA’s 35th annual convention, which took place online last month.)

Moving towards ‘genetic education’

In 2018, the international Huntington’s Disease Youth Organization (HDYO) added to its website a very readable “Genetic Testing Checklist,” covering key topics such as motivation for testing, coping with the test results, the testing process, and key things to do before testing, such as lining up insurance coverage (discussed below). This resource echoes many of the points made in HDSA materials.

In 2019, veteran University of Washington neurologist Thomas D. Bird, M.D., published Can You Help Me? Inside the Turbulent World of Huntington Disease, a book based on his more than 40 years’ experience seeing HD patients and their families. It includes detailed discussion of the many issues involved in what Dr. Bird calls the “genetic testing conundrum.”

Individuals contemplating genetic testing will find many valuable stories in Dr. Bird’s book. He describes the gamut of people’s reactions to testing – from individuals who have tested negative but still require a while for it to “sink in,” to (sadly) the risk for suicide among people testing positive.

“Suicide represents the cause of death in about 5-6% of persons with HD – five times higher than the national average,” Dr. Bird explains. “It can happen at any time but it is most common when a person at risk decides he or she is developing symptoms.”

Dr. Bird observes, crucially, that the “genetic test result is not black and white, all or nothing.” This reflects the latest genetic research on HD, which has demonstrated that the age of onset of symptoms is driven not just by the severity of the mutation but also by modifier genes (click here to read more).

This is why Dr. Bird stresses a comprehensive understanding of genetic counseling.

“Some people don’t like the term counseling,” he writes. “It sounds too much like psychotherapy, and they are wary of that. In fact, genetic counseling does sometimes have a heavy dose of psychotherapy, but it entails much more. Perhaps the best word would be education – genetic education.”

(I will review Can You Help Me? more fully in a future article.)

Ten key steps 

With these resources in mind, I list below ten key steps in preparing for a predictive genetic test and dealing with its short- and long-term consequences. These are my personal thoughts; this list is not meant to be exhaustive or official. Individuals should always consult their physicians. Each individual’s situation is unique.

1. Learn as much as you can about HD by studying the resources cited in this article, as well as others.

2. Join a support group, where you can learn from and share ideas with others confronting HD, as well as from facilitators and health professionals.

3. Contact the nearest HDSA Center of Excellence (or other HD or neurology clinic), where you can obtain information about testing and clinical services. You also can become involved in critical efforts towards treatments such as clinical trials and research studies like Enroll-HD. 

4. Know your rights regarding genetic testing and healthcare access under federal, state, and local law in your country of residence, and, in the U.S., learn about GINA.

5. Obtain life, disability, and/or long-term care insurance prior to testing. GINA does not protect consumers in these areas. In 1999, before testing, I was able to secure a long-term care policy with lifetime coverage. Since then, the long-term care market has gone into crisis, with many fewer policies issued, and far more limited coverage (click here and here to read more). At the time, I found it very helpful to work with an insurance broker recommended by an insurance agent specializing in long-term care who had been a guest speaker at the HD support group.

6. Set up a will, an advanced directive for end-of-life care, and, if appropriate, a living will to help protect assets. Also plan for the potential impact of HD on family finances by consulting a trusted financial advisor.

7. Research and select the testing center for your genetic test, including the cost of the procedure, which can run from a few hundred dollars to more than $1,000. (Some HDSA Centers of Excellence offer free or reduced pricing on testing. One foundation has paid for in vitro fertilization of non-HD-affected embryos but temporarily suspended grants because of the COVID-19 pandemic.) Some HD family members have criticized the quality of guidance provided at some centers. Be your own best advocate, and don’t be afraid to ask questions.

8. Find a trusted family member or friend to be your support person.

9. Build a relationship with a trusted psychotherapist.

10. Become active in HDSA and/or other advocacy organizations.

With potential treatments, an expected boom in testing

As the geneticist who revealed my test results in 1999 stated, “a positive test is not a diagnosis.” Physicians and scientists underscore this point. Like me, many people live years and even decades after their test before symptoms start.

Currently, no more than ten percent of at-risk individuals choose to be tested. The vast majority fear a potentially depressing result, “and there is no means of prevention,” Dr. Bird observes.

However, as clinical trials such as the historic GENERATION HD1 proceed, the potential for the first effective treatments has grown significantly.

Indeed, doctors and HD clinics are preparing for the likely boom in testing for the HD mutation that will occur if GENERATION HD1 or trials of other possible disease-modifying treatments are successful, as people seek to learn their status before starting on a treatment. (Click here and here to read more.)

More than ever, people seeking HD predictive testing and their families will need what Dr. Bird describes as “an experienced, compassionate team to help them through this challenge.”

I’m a Huntington’s disease gene carrier at age 60, so why haven’t I developed symptoms yet?

Huntington’s disease struck my mother in her late 40s, turned her into a debilitated, mere shadow of herself by her late 50s, and took her life at 68. I inherited from her the same degree of genetic mutation. Last December, I turned 60. So, doomed to suffer this inevitable and untreatable disease, why don’t I have any apparent symptoms yet?

Of course, I am thrilled to have avoided the dreadful scenario I imagined for myself after my mother’s diagnosis in 1995 and my positive test for the mutated, expanded gene in 1999. I did not believe that, by age 60, I would still be able to work, write, and not become a burden for my family. Indeed, in January, I marked fifteen years as a Huntington’s disease blogger.

I have written about my broad range of strategies for keeping healthy, including swimming, neurobics  (exercising the brain) and blogging, and taking supplements, some of which were ultimately proved ineffective. I stretch daily to keep limber, and I eat a healthy diet (no alcohol, sodas, or red meat; minimal processed foods; and lots of fish and fresh fruits, vegetables, and salads). I also consult a psychotherapist, meditate, and practice spirituality. 

I also have the benefit of a stable, solid-paying job and a close relationship with my wife and daughter. I cannot be sure whether any of these things help avoid HD, but they generally bolster health.

As Robert Pacifici, Ph.D., the chief scientific officer for the nonprofit, HD-focused CHDI Foundation, Inc., pointed out in a major interview last year, “lifestyle” is potentially very important. Evidence from at least one animal study suggests this, he said, although no scientific data yet prove this for HD in humans (click here to read more).

However, extensive, pathbreaking research based on humans has provided a new understanding of the genetics of Huntington’s and why people with the same size of gene mutation – the same CAG count, as explained below – can experience widely different ages of onset. A Huntington’s Disease Society of America (HDSA) webinar, presented by James Gusella, Ph.D., on November 19, 2019, explained the main points of this research and its relevance for HD families.

“You can relatively easily find people who’ve developed symptoms maybe 20 or more years later than you’d expect from the average, or 20 or more years earlier than you’d expect, and you can find people all along that range,” said Dr. Gusella, who titled his presentation “New Insights on Huntington’s Disease Age of Onset from Genetic Studies of HD Families.”

Dr. Gusella is the Bullard Professor of Neurogenetics at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Center for Human Genetic Research at Massachusetts General Hospital. He helped lead the efforts that narrowed the search for the huntingtin gene to chromosome 4 in 1983 and the discovery of the gene in 1993 (click here to read more). Since then, he and his collaborators have continued to make important discoveries about HD.

Above, Dr. James Gusella (left) during an interview with Gene Veritas (aka Kenneth P. Serbin) at the 7th Annual Huntington's Disease Therapeutics Conference, sponsored by CHDI,  in 2012. Below, a slide from Dr. Gusella's HDSA webinar presentation illustrating the average age of HD onset correlated with the CAG count.

The CAG count

Focusing on the discovery of so-called “modifier genes” for HD, Dr. Gusella delved into the reasons for the wide variations in onset – and the potential this research has for producing HD treatments.

As Dr. Gusella explained in the webinar, the human genome has 3 billion “letters,” or base pairs, which make up our DNA. The four letters that make up the bases of DNA are A (for adenine), C (cytosine), G (guanine), and T (thymine).

Like all genes, the huntingtin gene is made of a string of “three-letter words,” sequences from those four letters. Within the gene is a segment in which the word “CAG” is repeated a number of times. Normal genes have 10-25 CAG repeats. Repeat lengths of 26-34 do not ordinarily cause HD, but the repeat number can increase as the gene is passed to a child, leading to HD in the offspring. HD can occur in people with 35-39 repeats, and genes with 39 or more repeats “almost always” cause the disease, Dr. Gusella stated.

“CAG repeats” is the lingo of the HD community. Tested gene carriers like me usually know our repeats, and those of our affected parent and relatives. I have 40, as did my mother.

The “CAG count,” as it’s also known, became critical in my wife’s and my decision to conceive, especially because males (we were told) had a greater tendency to pass on a larger number of repeats. What if our child had a few more repeats or even more?

The CAG count has long factored heavily in genetic counseling and even in people’s decisions about moral dilemmas like abortion.

In general, the more repeats, the earlier the onset, leading even to juvenile HD – although, as Dr. Gusella emphasized, the age of onset varies widely.

New thinking about HD genetics

Since the discovery of the HD gene, scientists have published thousands of papers on HD, many of them based on studies in non-human organisms such as flies, mice, sheep, and primates – some of these organisms genetically modified (before birth) to later develop HD-like symptoms. However, because HD occurs only in humans, ultimately our species provides the best model for understanding and treating the disease, scientists say.

Scientific advances and the advent of clinical trials have made deeper research in humans more widespread and easier to carry out.

“We’re firm believers that, if you’re going to study a human disease, you’re best to study it first in people, rather than in trying to recreate it in other animals,” Dr. Gusella stated. “People really give you the information for what the disease is.”

Assessing genetic data collected over decades in more than 9,000 people affected by HD, Dr. Gusella and the Genetic Modifiers of HD (GeM-HD) Consortium have made discoveries that have changed standard thinking about Huntington’s genetics.

This type of broad-ranging study is known as GWAS, genome-wide association study. 

As Dr. Pacifici stated in 2015, human data are “precious” because they enable Huntington’s drug hunters to design and run better clinical trials, which are crucial for developing treatments.

Dr. Robert Pacifici (photo by Gene Veritas)

Explaining onset

In the webinar, Dr. Gusella detailed the research on CAG repeats and onset. A correlation definitely exists, he stated. However, other key factors come in into play.

“The inherited CAG length accounts for about 60 percent or so of the variation in age of onset, but there is a lot of variation” at each CAG count, he said.

“Just measuring the CAG repeat doesn’t give you an accurate prediction of when any given individual is going to have onset,” he emphasized. Research in thousands of people produces an average, “but it really doesn’t tell you much specifically about a given individual that would be useful diagnostically.”

However, the mass CAG data can help scientists explain why individuals diverge from the average, he stated.

Forty percent of the reason for onset must be due to factors other than the CAG count, Dr. Gusella continued. From their research, the GeM-HD Consortium concluded that 20 percent is due to other genes, that is, modifier genes “that are influencing when you have onset.”

Environmental factors ‘hard to study’

“The other 20 percent remains unexplained,” Dr. Gusella said. “It could be anything. It could be chance. It could be environmental factors.”

Environmental factors “are very hard to figure out and study,” he added. In answer to a webinar question about environment, diet, and exercise, Dr. Gusella could point to no study on the topic, although he noted that such research falls outside his expertise.

Indeed, in my more than two decades as an HD advocate and participant in numerous research studies, I’ve not been aware of any such study for presymptomatic gene carriers like me. The closest was PREDICT-HD, which collected samples of blood, urine, saliva, and cerebrospinal fluid from presymptomatic gene carriers. It also had them undergo a motor coordination exam and brain MRI scan and perform a battery of cognitive and mood tests. (Click here to read more).

Dr. Gusella added that the unexplained factors could also include “simply the diagnostic uncertainty, because you’re dealing with a motor onset.”

Motor onset marks the start of the involuntary movements typical in HD. Doctors have long used it as the standard way of diagnosing the disease, as opposed to other, initially often more subtle symptoms such as depression or cognitive difficulties.

However, as Dr. Gusella noted, diagnosing motor onset can be “a little bit subjective” on the part of the patient, the family, and the physicians. They all might also lack certainty about the exact time of onset.

Modifier genes influence age of onset

For the 20 percent of onset determined by modifier genes, the GeM-HD Consortium has hard evidence from the genetic studies of the 9,000-plus individuals.

It is “clear” that genetic variations “account for the differences” in age of onset for people with the same CAG count, Dr. Gusella said.

Everybody has genetic differences such as hair and eye color, and the overall number of differences among people is very large, he explained. By studying thousands of people, and using two methods of analysis, the scientists have detected 23 genes that influence the onset of HD.

Modifiers can come from both the affected and non-affected parent, Dr. Gusella pointed out.

As with many other genes, researchers have assigned these modifiers with very long, scientific names, which they have abbreviated to terms like FAN1. Delay in onset from the average varied from one to 20 years. FAN1 and most of the other modifiers are involved in the maintenance and repair of DNA, which, in general, helps cells remain healthy, he noted.

A slide from Dr. Gusella's presentation illustrating the location on the chromosomes of some of the currently identified Huntington's disease modifier genes

Dr. Gusella stressed that the GeM-HD research had not yet resulted in new types of genetic tests for individuals to discover whether they have favorable or unfavorable modifier genes. The research correlates to observations in thousands of people, but does not allow for prediction of age of onset in any given individual. 

The GeM-HD findings have shed light on other genetic aspects of the disease critical for families and family planning. When an affected parent passes on an abnormal CAG repeat, the count can increase or decrease, usually by one to three repeats, with a slight tendency to go up, and with a greater tendency for increases in CAG count when the gene is passed on by males, Dr. Gusella stated.

However, because of the action of modifier genes and the larger overall variation in onset, any attempt to “to predict onset from relatives” could “easily be wrong.”

So, Dr. Gusella asked, if such findings cannot directly inform individuals and their families, what are they good for?

Researchers can seek to investigate the “mechanism” by which the modifiers affect the “disease process” and then, based on that knowledge, design treatments to influence that process “in a much, much stronger fashion” than any of the modifiers does individually.

“Imagine if we had a drug that could delay onset of motor symptoms by 40 years!” Dr. Pacifici exclaimed, commenting on the discovery of the modifier genes. “My gosh, that would be fantastic. Nature’s kind of done that experiment for us. It’s told us that it is possible to modulate the disease.”

A slide from Dr. Gusella's presentation illustrating how age of disease onset is influenced by modifier genes, as shown in the different curves

The defective protein

Another key finding of the GeM-HD studies has also changed standard thinking in the HD field. This discovery involves the protein made by the huntingtin gene, also called huntingtin.

Each 3-letter “word” in the DNA encodes an amino acid to put into the protein the cell is making.  There are 20 different amino acids; proteins are made of long chains of hundreds or thousands of amino acids, which are then folded, linked, or otherwise modified to create the final product. Dr. Gusella described proteins as the “workers in the cell.” Cells are assisted in this process by RNA, which acts as a messenger to carry instructions from the DNA in the making of proteins.

In the case of huntingtin, there is a particular location in the gene where the word CAG appears many times in a row, as noted above. This leads to the creation of a protein that includes the amino acid glutamine many times in a row.

Since the discovery of the gene, scientists have assumed that HD onset occurred because of too many glutamines in the protein, supposedly resulting in cumulative damage to brain cells by the faulty protein, Dr. Gusella observed.

“This assumption is actually not correct,” he reported.

The gene drives onset

The GeM-HD researchers found that, after the string of CAG repeats in the gene, there is usually the “word” CAA and then another CAG, Dr. Gusella explained. The DNA “words” CAG and CAA both mean “glutamine” to the cell’s protein-making apparatus.  

“The vast, vast majority of Huntington’s disease individuals have that structure,” he continued.

However, in less than one percent of people with HD, there is no extra CAA-CAG – or there are two CAA-CAG combinations.

These genetic differences affect the measurement of the CAG count, making the actual section of the gene shorter or longer than the laboratory would measure using usual test methods, Dr. Gusella explained. Detecting these very small variations in DNA sequence in a small number of patients is difficult and costly. Also, as with modifier genes, getting tested for these differences would not benefit HD patients in any way, he added.

However, these uncommon variants in the DNA sequence permitted researchers to do something very important: to distinguish the effect of the CAG from the effect of the glutamine.

“It’s not glutamine that’s driving the time of onset,” Dr. Gusella explained. “It’s some property of the CAG repeat itself, some property of the DNA where the consecutive CAG that’s not interrupted by anything is determining roughly the time of onset.”

Here is an example: a typical person with HD might have a huntingtin gene with 42 CAGs followed by a CAA and another CAG. Because both CAA and CAG lead to glutamine, the gene test would say that he had 44 CAG repeats, and his huntingtin protein would have 44 glutamines in a row. But the testing in Dr. Gusella’s laboratory would show that there were only 42 CAG repeats before the CAA “interruption.” Another person might have 44 CAG repeats without a CAA interruption. Her gene test would show that she has 44 CAG repeats, the special test would show 44 repeats, and the protein would have 44 glutamines in a row. The first patient, however, who has a smaller actual number of CAG repeats before the interruption, would have a later onset age than the second patient.

This finding “makes a big difference for how you think about the disease and how you might go about trying to intervene in it,” Dr. Gusella concluded.

Dr. Gusella with long-time collaborator Marcy MacDonald, Ph.D., a member of the GeM-HD team (HSDA photo)

The CAG can expand over time

Another “special property” of the expanded CAG repeat is that the longer it starts out, the more likely it is to increase in size over time, Dr. Gusella said.

According to Dr. Pacifici, this so-called somatic expansion could be related to the appearance of symptoms. In this theory, brain cell damage and death occurs as CAG repeat lengths within the cell increase from 40-50 to 100 or more.

Several of the 23 modifier genes identified by the GeM-HD team appear to influence somatic expansion of the CAG; some modifiers seem to make it go faster, leading to early symptom onset, while others seem to slow somatic expansion, leading to a later onset of symptoms.

Onset (start of the disease) is different from progression (how the disease worsens over time).

Dr. Gusella cautiously answered a question from a webinar participant about whether a later onset could slow or hasten “progression” of the disease. He observed that the HD field has not yet established a clear definition of progression, with much debate on the matter. Clearly, as the GeM-HD data demonstrate, there’s a “lesser influence” of the CAG count on the changes in symptoms “than there was on getting there in the first place, of starting to have them.”

Implications for potential treatments

Taken together, the GeM-HD findings have helped to specify – over a large number of people – a number of genetic factors determining HD onset, and to show that it’s not a “cumulative damage as a result of the huntingtin protein,” Dr. Gusella summarized.

“The mechanism of toxicity is uncertain – it might involve huntingtin protein or might act by another mechanism involving the DNA or RNA of the HD gene,” he said.

The search for other modifier genes continues in the quest to clarify how the cells are being harmed, he said. Researchers are also examining how rapidly certain measures of health change before onset, how the disease changes after onset, and the differences in how the disease develops in people with very similar CAG length.

Dr. Gusella addressed the potential implications of the GeM-HD research for clinical trials in progress that seek actually to reduce the amount of the huntingtin protein in brain cells. Run by Roche, the first of these so-called huntingtin-lowering trials, GENERATION HD1, entered a critical and final Phase 3 in early 2019 (click here for the latest update on the trial).

“Those therapies are being applied at a point in time where you’re right around onset or after onset, which means that the expansion of the repeat that is leading to damage has gotten to the point where enough cells are damaged that you are close to or showing symptoms,” Dr. Gusella said. “If you now knock down the huntingtin [protein], if the huntingtin is the mechanism by which the expanded repeat ultimately kills the cell, then it should work. If it’s the RNA, it may work, depending on what the effect of the treatment is on the RNA level.”

However, Dr. Gusella emphasized that the GeM-HD findings do not address when a huntingtin lowering therapy should be given, or whether or how they work.

“I certainly hope that it does,” he added.

Other paths to drugs

Dr. Gusella addressed other ways in which the new understanding of HD genetics might help in the search for treatments. One possibility would be to interfere with the characteristic of the CAG repeat that is seen as driving onset, he said. Another approach could involve the modifiers engaged in DNA maintenance and repair – by manipulating them with drugs, suppressing them, or by activating them.

Yet another way would be to block the somatic expansion of the huntingtin gene, Dr. Gusella continued. Researchers could also use the new techniques developed for manipulating DNA and perhaps even change the number of repeats. Also, huntingtin-lowering drugs (if and when they are developed) could be used in combination with as yet undiscovered modifiers, he said.

Would more genetic information be helpful?

In addition to the Dr. Gusella’s 2019 webinar – his first such presentation for HDSA – I’ve also watched talks at scientific conferences by him, his long-time collaborator Marcy MacDonald, Ph.D., and Jong-Min Lee, Ph.D. According to Dr. Gusella, Dr. Lee “in particular has helped drive these studies.”

People in the HD community often speculate as to what “triggers” the disease. The GeM-HD research provides a partial but important answer with its discovery of modifier genes and other genetic factors that influence the age of onset.

Dr. Jong-Min Lee at the 2015 HD Therapeutics Conference (photo by Gene Veritas)

For many years, I have speculated about my age of onset, almost always referencing my mother’s situation. However, as the GeM-HD research now shows, that is not very helpful because of the great variation in age of onset.

Thus, as I’ve watched the research progress, I have wondered: could one or more modifier genes inherited from my parents have acted to delay my HD onset well beyond my mother’s?

I’ve also thought about somatic expansion: perhaps my mother’s 40 CAG repeats expanded to a much higher number more quickly than mine. Perhaps the other genetic factors outlined by Dr. Gusella have had an impact.

For now, at least, I can’t be tested for the modifier genes or these other factors. As Dr. Gusella indicated, even if I could, it’s not clear how predictive they would be, nor how helpful such knowledge would be.

From 1995 to 2000, my family went through three CAG tests: my mother’s, mine, and our daughter’s. Luckily, our daughter tested negative in the womb, but my wife and I waited for three agonizing months to learn her status.

After those difficult experiences, would I really want to go through more tests? If I could know my genetics to a more precise level, including moment of onset and how the disease would develop, would I really want such information?

Because of the lack of an effective treatment, most at-risk untested individuals decline testing for the CAG count. As Gene Veritas – the person who wanted to know the “truth in his genes” – I’m an outlier.

However, I cannot predict my feelings about further genetic testing until actually facing that possibility. I would only know at the moment they became available.

HD in the vanguard, but still highly complex

A decision to get tested again and my feelings about it would also depend on the availability of effective treatments. With the potential success of the Roche drug and others, doctors and HD clinics are preparing for the likely boom in testing for the CAG mutation, as people seek to learn their status before taking a drug.

As Dr. Gusella pointed out, HD stands in the vanguard of the attempt to apply protein-lowering and other cutting-edge techniques because, unlike the other major neurological disorders, it is monogenetic: it has a single genetic cause.

The critical GeM-HD discoveries could perhaps bolster the effectiveness of these other approaches or even result in unique medicines.

However, the new genetic research also underscores another reality of HD. Despite its monogenetic status, it is complex and features subtle genetic nuances. Huge challenges remain in developing treatments.

For HD-impacted individuals and their families, in the near term much will remain a mystery.

(For further background on the GeM-HD research, click here for the 2019 CHDI presentation “Genetic Modifiers” by Dr. MacDonald. Click here for the 2015 CHDI presentation by Dr. Lee.)