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Clinical Manifestation of Juvenile and Pediatric HD Patients: A Retrospective Case Series

Background: Studies on the clinical manifestation and course of disease in children suffering from Huntington’s disease (HD) are rare. Case reports of juvenile HD (onset ≤ 20 years) describe heterogeneous motoric and non-motoric symptoms, often accompanied with a delay in diagnosis. We aimed to desc...

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Autores principales: Achenbach, Jannis, Thiels, Charlotte, Lücke, Thomas, Saft, Carsten
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7349685/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32503138
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci10060340
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author Achenbach, Jannis
Thiels, Charlotte
Lücke, Thomas
Saft, Carsten
author_facet Achenbach, Jannis
Thiels, Charlotte
Lücke, Thomas
Saft, Carsten
author_sort Achenbach, Jannis
collection PubMed
description Background: Studies on the clinical manifestation and course of disease in children suffering from Huntington’s disease (HD) are rare. Case reports of juvenile HD (onset ≤ 20 years) describe heterogeneous motoric and non-motoric symptoms, often accompanied with a delay in diagnosis. We aimed to describe this rare group of patients, especially with regard to socio-medical aspects and individual or common treatment strategies. In addition, we differentiated between juvenile and the recently defined pediatric HD population (onset < 18 years). Methods: Out of 2593 individual HD patients treated within the last 25 years in the Huntington Centre, North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), 32 subjects were analyzed with an early onset younger than 21 years (1.23%, juvenile) and 18 of them younger than 18 years of age (0.69%, pediatric). Results: Beside a high degree of school problems, irritability or aggressive behavior (62.5% of pediatric and 31.2% of juvenile cases), serious problems concerning the social and family background were reported in 25% of the pediatric cohort. This includes an attempted rape and robbery at the age of 12, as problems caused by the affected children, but also alcohol-dependency in a two-year-old induced by a non-HD affected stepfather. A high degree of suicidal attempts and ideations (31.2% in pediatric and 33.3% in juvenile group) was reported, including drinking of solvents, swallowing razor blades or jumping from the fifth floor with following incomplete paraparesis. Beside dopaminergic drugs for treatment of bradykinesia, benzodiazepines and tetrabenazine for treatment of dystonia, cannabinoids, botulinum toxin injection and deep brain stimulation were used for the improvement of movement disorders, clozapine for the treatment of tremor, and dopa-induced hallucinations and zuclopenthixole for the treatment of severe aggressive behavior. Conclusions: Beside abnormalities in behavior from an early age due to HD pathology, children seem to have higher socio-medical problems related to additional burden caused by early affected parents, instable family backgrounds including drug abuse of a parent or multiple changes of partners. Treatment required individualized strategies in many cases.
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spelling pubmed-73496852020-07-15 Clinical Manifestation of Juvenile and Pediatric HD Patients: A Retrospective Case Series Achenbach, Jannis Thiels, Charlotte Lücke, Thomas Saft, Carsten Brain Sci Article Background: Studies on the clinical manifestation and course of disease in children suffering from Huntington’s disease (HD) are rare. Case reports of juvenile HD (onset ≤ 20 years) describe heterogeneous motoric and non-motoric symptoms, often accompanied with a delay in diagnosis. We aimed to describe this rare group of patients, especially with regard to socio-medical aspects and individual or common treatment strategies. In addition, we differentiated between juvenile and the recently defined pediatric HD population (onset < 18 years). Methods: Out of 2593 individual HD patients treated within the last 25 years in the Huntington Centre, North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), 32 subjects were analyzed with an early onset younger than 21 years (1.23%, juvenile) and 18 of them younger than 18 years of age (0.69%, pediatric). Results: Beside a high degree of school problems, irritability or aggressive behavior (62.5% of pediatric and 31.2% of juvenile cases), serious problems concerning the social and family background were reported in 25% of the pediatric cohort. This includes an attempted rape and robbery at the age of 12, as problems caused by the affected children, but also alcohol-dependency in a two-year-old induced by a non-HD affected stepfather. A high degree of suicidal attempts and ideations (31.2% in pediatric and 33.3% in juvenile group) was reported, including drinking of solvents, swallowing razor blades or jumping from the fifth floor with following incomplete paraparesis. Beside dopaminergic drugs for treatment of bradykinesia, benzodiazepines and tetrabenazine for treatment of dystonia, cannabinoids, botulinum toxin injection and deep brain stimulation were used for the improvement of movement disorders, clozapine for the treatment of tremor, and dopa-induced hallucinations and zuclopenthixole for the treatment of severe aggressive behavior. Conclusions: Beside abnormalities in behavior from an early age due to HD pathology, children seem to have higher socio-medical problems related to additional burden caused by early affected parents, instable family backgrounds including drug abuse of a parent or multiple changes of partners. Treatment required individualized strategies in many cases. MDPI 2020-06-03 /pmc/articles/PMC7349685/ /pubmed/32503138 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci10060340 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Achenbach, Jannis
Thiels, Charlotte
Lücke, Thomas
Saft, Carsten
Clinical Manifestation of Juvenile and Pediatric HD Patients: A Retrospective Case Series
title Clinical Manifestation of Juvenile and Pediatric HD Patients: A Retrospective Case Series
title_full Clinical Manifestation of Juvenile and Pediatric HD Patients: A Retrospective Case Series
title_fullStr Clinical Manifestation of Juvenile and Pediatric HD Patients: A Retrospective Case Series
title_full_unstemmed Clinical Manifestation of Juvenile and Pediatric HD Patients: A Retrospective Case Series
title_short Clinical Manifestation of Juvenile and Pediatric HD Patients: A Retrospective Case Series
title_sort clinical manifestation of juvenile and pediatric hd patients: a retrospective case series
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7349685/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32503138
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci10060340
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