Signs in blood may mirror Huntington's brain damage

By Michael Kahn

LONDON (Reuters) - Tell-tale signs in the blood may reflect how abnormal proteins destroy brain cells in people with Huntington's disease, an incurable, inherited condition, British researchers said on Monday.

The findings point to a better understanding of how the disease damages nerve cells in the brain and could lead to treatments to delay symptoms, said Sarah Tabrizi, a neurologist at University College London who led the study.

"We appear to have detected something that may mirror what is going on in the brain," she said in a telephone interview. "This can contribute to the huge body of work trying to develop therapies to delay the disease onset into old age."

Huntington's disease affects up to one person in every 10,000 in the Western world. It is a progressive, degenerative condition marked by uncontrolled movements, emotional disturbances and mental deterioration.

Drugs can help manage symptoms but do not stop the physical and mental decline. Patients typically die within 10 to 15 years after symptoms arise.

Children of people with the disease have a 50 percent chance of inheriting the faulty gene that causes it, and if they get even one copy of the damaged gene, they will develop Huntington's at some point.

In their study published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, the researchers looked at mouse models, blood samples of volunteers with the defective gene and brain tissue taken from people with Huntington's after they had died.

In all cases they found high levels of cytokines -- signalling proteins produced by white blood cells -- that could be damaging nerve cells in the brain before people develop the disease, Tabrizi said.