Key Gene in Huntington’s ID’D

U.S. and Norway researchers said Monday a mutation in the body’s genetic repair system may cause Huntington’s disease.

A team from the Mayo Clinic, the National Institutes of Health and the University of Oslo studied mice bred with the human Huntington’s gene. They found that the Huntington’s-linked gene mutation caused the DNA system to keep adding new segments that weren’t needed until the DNA in cells became so huge that the cells died.

The repair segment build-up became toxic when the mice reached middle age, which is usually when the disease first manifests in humans, the team said.

But when the research team eliminated a key DNA repair enzyme called OGG1, segment growth stopped or greatly decreased.

The researchers said they think OGG1 may be a target for interventional therapies that could disrupt the onset of Huntington’s disease.

A report on the research appears in the online issue of the journal Nature.