Students receive lecture on disease, treatment

MUSCLE SHOALS - Huntington's disease, a fatal inherited form of dementia, strikes people in their 30s and 40s, but new genetic research may give patients hope to avoid its symptoms.

Symptoms can include involuntary dance-like movements, drastic personality change and memory loss, especially short-term memory.

Nationally, about 30,000 people have the disease and about 150,000 are at risk of inheriting the disease from a parent. The genetic cause of Huntington's was identified in 1993, but so far, no cure is known.

Now, instead of watching as symptoms worsen and a patient's brain atrophies and he eventually dies, geneticists are using gene technologies to try to correct the eventual slide into dementia and death.

Geneticist Dr. Beverly L. Davidson, an associate director for the Iowa Center for Gene Therapy and vice chair for research in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Iowa, talked to students on the Northwest-Shoals Community College campus Tuesday about research in finding a cure for Huntington's disease.

She was in the Shoals through a fellowship grant with the Lori C. Sasser Foundation.

"We're getting closer to being able to develop therapies to keep brain cells from dying," Davidson said. "Huntington's isn't as reversible as it once seemed."

Davidson spoke to biology students from Northwest-Shoals and the University of North Alabama as well as high school students from Mars Hill Bible School.

Davidson and her group of researchers are using a method, RNA interference, to try and correct the mutant gene that causes Huntington's.

In Huntington's patients, a gene becomes so greatly expanded that it becomes useless.

The ground-breaking treatment, also known as RNAi, in effect shuts down production of the bloated gene and decreases disease in brain cells.

RNAi has been used, with success, in clinical trials with lab mice and may be used in human trials within the next few years.

Davidson said the RNAi is promising treatment for other diseases as well, including cancer, HIV, hepatitis B and C and macular degeneration.

"Researchers know what to do, it's just a matter of getting to work in a human brain. (Science) can never move as quickly as we'd like."

One student asked if there was a way to determine from a person's genes earlier than age 30 if they'll develop the disease.

An individual has a 50 percent chance of developing Huntington's if it is in the family.

Davidson said genetic testing before age 30 will determine if a person will develop the disease.

"It's absolutely, 100 percent predictable through genetic testing," she said.

Mars Hill Bible School science teacher Rebecca Swinea said Davidson's talk was informative for her students who just finished a study in genetics.

"This information was very technical, but she made it understandable," she said. "We were fortunate to be invited to hear her."

Lisa Singleton-Rickman can be reached at 740-5735 or lisa.singleton-rickman@timesdaily.com

TimesDaily Staff Writer Trevor Stokes contributed to this report.