A tale of two maladies? Pathogenesis of depression with and without the Huntington's disease gene mutation

Abstract

Huntington's disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant disorder caused by a tandem repeat expansion encoding an expanded tract of glutamines in the huntingtin protein. HD is progressive and manifests as psychiatric symptoms (including depression), cognitive deficits (culminating in dementia), and motor abnormalities (including chorea). Having reached the twentieth anniversary of the discovery of the "genetic stutter" which causes HD, we still lack sophisticated insight into why so many HD patients exhibit affective disorders such as depression at very early stages, prior to overt appearance of motor deficits. In this review, we will focus on depression as the major psychiatric manifestation of H..