The HOPES Timeline (Non-Flash, Part 2)

A Brief History of Huntington's Disease

Scenes 6-10

1872

George Huntington writes a landmark paper entitled "On Chorea." Using personal accounts of his father´s patients, Huntington provided a classic description of HD´s symptoms and emphasizes HD´s hereditary nature. Significant interest in HD, especially its genetic component, occurs due to George Huntington´s paper, "On Chorea" (1872).

1910-11

The American eugenicist Charles B. Davenport writes Heredity in Relation to Eugenics (1911), in which he uses genetic diseases, including HD, to argue in favor of compulsory sterilization and immigration restriction for those afflicted with HD. Davenport founds the Cold Spring Harbor Biological Laboratory and Eugenics Record Office in 1910 to track families with inherited disorders, and he produces what is, at the time, the largest study of families with HD.

1910-11

Researchers first note the deterioration the central region of the brains of patients as the disease progresses. They identify the caudate nucleus as the central target of brain cell death.

1950s

An upsurge in publications on HD research occurs with the growing interest in human genetics and the 1953 discovery of DNA´s structure by Watson and Crick.

1955

Americo Negrette publishes a book describing communities in Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela, with unusually high numbers of individuals affected by HD.

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Last Modified: 04/12/2007

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