Quantitative assessment of eye movements in Huntington's Disease
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Quantitative assessment of eye movements in Huntington's disease: sensitivity to disease progression and functional impact
IRAS ID
198487
Contact name
Jonathan Erichsen
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cardiff University
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 11 months, 28 days
Research summary
Huntington's disease (HD) is a neurodegerative condition that usually starts in midlife and results in progressive deterioration of movement, intellect, and behaviour over a period of approximately 25 years, culminating in a person requiring full nursing care. It can be diagnosed in life through a genetic test. Currently there are no disease modifying treatments available and existing management is restricted to symptomatic treatments and palliative care, hence there is an imperative to identify the potential treatment strategies.
HD causes a range of progressive motor, cognitive and behavioural symptoms. From the early stages of the condition, EM abnormalities can be identified on bedside testing, and subtle eye movement changes can be detected using specialist quantitative eye movement (QEM) analysis in patients who are asymptomatic (i.e carry the abnormal gene, but have not yet developed symptoms). We have data from 22 patients demonstrating that 19 were able to undergo the full assessment thus demonstrating feasibility and indicating the limits of operation in this group.
We would now like to use QEM analysis as a tool to track progression in manifest HD. This is important (i) to develop biomarkers of disease progression; (ii) as an outcome measure for interventional clinical trials, replacing or supplementing existing rudimentary EM testing currently used in the clinical environment; (iii) to better understand the clinical impact of EM abnormalities in HD. We have carried out a pilot study (13/WA/0162) to assess the feasibility of undertaking QEM in patients with manifest HD. This was necessary because previous studies of QEM in HD had largely focused on asymptomatic individuals who do not suffer the movement abnormalities.
REC name
North of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 1
REC reference
17/NS/0031
Date of REC Opinion
26 Jul 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion