Dysphagia in Huntington’s disease: a multimodal imaging study / v1.0
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Full title: Dysphagia in early stage Huntington’s disease: A multimodal imaging approach to target stimulation based therapies
IRAS ID
164475
Contact name
Shaheen Hamdy
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
The University of Manchester
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 29 days
Research summary
Huntington’ disease (HD) is an inherited, degenerative disorder of the brain presenting with movement disorders, behavioural and cognitive impairment. As the disease progresses, dysfunction in swallowing (dysphagia) affects most patients and is the most frequent cause of death. However, the neural mechanisms underlying dysphagia in HD are not well understood. It is not known which areas of the brain are involved and where the central control is disturbed in the impaired swallowing process in HD.
We aim to examine early stage HD patients with mild dysphagia using a comprehensive, multimodal approach that combines well-established swallowing assessments with functional imaging.
We can image the brain activity during swallowing with a technique called positron emission tomography (PET). This way we detect how the swallowing process is controlled by the brain. In order to evaluate what is different in HD we need to compare the findings of our HD patients with those of healthy controls. A magnetic resonance image (MRI) will also be obtained which gives us a structural image of the brain.
In addition, patients will undergo clinical assessments of their Huntington's disease as well as for their swallowing function. The latter includes a video X-ray that visualizes a person’s swallowing. These clinical findings will be correlated with the changes we see on the patient’s brain images.We hope that our study will help us understand the nature of the swallowing problems in HD better and inform us which brain areas to target with new therapeutic interventions.
REC name
North West - Greater Manchester West Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/NW/0157
Date of REC Opinion
7 Apr 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion