LIRH Huntington Disease Research Award 2018

The scientific committee of the Foundation has considered worthy of the LIRH Huntington Disease Research Award 2018 Dr. Caterina Fusilli, first author of the article "Biological and clinical manifestations of juvenile Huntington's disease: a retrospective analysis".

Lancet Neurol. 2018 Nov - Fusilli C, Migliore S, Mazza T, Consoli F, De Luca A, Barbagallo G, Ciammola A, Gatto EM, Cesarini M, Etcheverry JL, Parisi V, Al-Oraimi M, Al-Harrasi S, Al-Salmi Q, Marano M, Vonsattel JG, Sabatini U, Landwehrmeyer GB, Squitieri F.

In the past, Huntington's disease with an early onset before the age of 20 was defined as the "juvenile form" (or Juvenile Huntington disease - JHD). It was a conventional definition, which arose from the objective difficulty in recognizing the biological and clinical differences between the juvenile and the adult form. Thanks to this discovery, the scientific community now recognizes the paediatric variant as the "real" juvenile form, being clinically and biologically different from that of the adult and paves the way, for the first time, to the possible inclusion of children in experimental therapeutic studies.

The Award was assigned by Dr. Selene Capodarca, international head of the Enroll-HD program on behalf of EHDN (European Huntington Disease Network), on the occasion of the LIRH annual conference held in Rome on December 1, 2018.