Maybe this has been posted before, but FYI I just thought I'd share. There has been some discussion about the variations in onset of HD. I jsut read this article about epigenetics and wonder if this is yet another piece of the puzzle in the answer to that question and maybe to an eventual cure? I guess the mouse study was done in 2006, so probably it's old news, but it was new to me. The Time magazine article was dated Jan 6, 2010



[www.time.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/2010 04:41PM by eve.

You are what you eat.
My sister had Adele Davis Let Us have healthy Babies and Let Us have healthy children and so did I. I also had access to the Montreal Diet dispensary during my pregnancies in Montreal in the 1970s. I was pregnant after thalidimde and just when the mothers given DES for bleeding had children with uterine and testicular cancer.

[en.wikipedia.org]

They ceased to give DES to the pregnant ladies and gave it to beef to make them gain weight faster. DES was outlawed in North America and continues to be used in Brazil and Argentina, the sources for my beloved corned beef.

Dr. Spock was not a source for nutrition. None of the doctors were. Good mothers were very interested in the best nutrition.Adele listed all the necessary nutrients for healthy babies 20 years before the doctors
[www.lionsgrip.com]

here is a Tigers milk recipe
[forums.organicgardening.com]

and from google books Miss Davis in Life Magazine. Note that book has the brain way up on the left.

[books.google.ca]



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 01/18/2010 10:21AM by dustyblues.

Wow! That is an interesting article. Lots of interesting ideas. I wonder if some epigenetic factors are why there is such a variation of age of onset and symtom severity for the same CAG in HD.

I find it more and more complicated to figure out which horse to back in the area of research... and genetics. Nothing sounds wrong when you listen to a person going up whatever avenue they are going, everything sounds bad if if you listen to others outside that avenue...

Rather than being a fan of a particular player in the game... I have started to appreciate the game itself. Medical advancement will always happen, long after I am gone. In a few generations people will wonder what it was like to be "me" and live without whatever they have as standard medical practice. We are quite primitive in the field of genetics and some of things we assume we know, or research we do. will look like the equivalent of blood letting to cure cancer in 1770. Other things will be practiced just as we do today. We will never know. I have every confidence that HD will be rectified. What I can't do anymore is guess as how and when. Five years and there might be an "Ah-ha moment" .. or the answer maybe something that we as yet just don't have a grip on at all and I won't get to see what happens. To me though... if it is longer away than I hope... I am ok knowing that sometime some great grandchild of someone is cured of this. I don't want granchildren until there is something solid. I would prefer it is my own child cured and they can pump out kids themselves if they want to. I would prefer people don't tinker around passing this on until we can do something to help future people who get the gene.

For all my hopes... and sometimes certainty that HD will be stopped soon, I could be wrong. I can easily put stock in people who make educated guesses for the suffers of today... but for the unborn I have to acknowledge for all the education, the word "guess" is more important. People have had children who have HD based on educated guesses that have been wrong... and means a child turned into a sufferer.

We can't stop people who make educated guesses and put a timeline to "the cure". We need the hope. But we have to be educated skeptics sometimes too... so that our hope doesn't harm. We have to realize what the guess is intended to be used for and what it's not. And when it's said this or that looks like a promising avenue, that doesn't mean there is anything approaching a promise. Especially within a timeline. I have turned into a much more casual observer of research... but probably a bigger supporter of it. Stuff like this article is very cool stuff... I want it looked into... but I have no idea what it means in the real life working world of medicine. I don't know who is making the best guesses of how to hope about the implications and when those implications will be useful. It was a good read though.