Evaluation of language functions in Huntington's disease

Purpose: the purpose of this study is to evaluate language functions in huntington’s disease (hd) patients whose genetic diagnoses confirmed and compared to control group. materials and methods: fifteen patients confirmed with genetic testing and 15 healthy group were included in the study. a battery containing the addenbrook cognitive examination (ace-r, verbal fluency and language part) and the mini mental state examination (mmse) tests were used to assess participants' language functions. results: there were 9 males and 6 females in each group. the average age of the patient and control group was 48. the mean duration of disease in the patient group was 5 years. mean cag repetetion of the patients was found 43.3 ± 3.5. when the groups were compared according to ace-r language test performance, scores of hd patients were found to be statistically lower. also, the performance scores of the patient group in ace-r verbal fluency test was similarly lower. however, this difference was not statistically significant. if the patients' cag repeat numbers were high, all the test times were taking longer time. as a result there was no positive correlation between language test and verbal fluency. conclusion: language functions in hd are disturbed even in patients with mild clinic and low cag repetition count. this affects not only the communication but also the daily living activities and disease burden.