Fibroblasts in Huntington's disease

We investigated the growth of skin fibroblasts in tissue culture from 10 patients with Huntington's disease and eight healthy, unrelated controls. The patients' ages ranged from 34 to 56 years (mean 48.5), and the mean duration of their clinical illness was 12.4 years. The controls' ages ranged from 32 to 64 years (mean, 42.3). No statistically significant differences were observed between the two groups in out-growth of cells from the biopsies nor during subsequent routine culturing of fibroblasts. This contradicts the finding of earlier investigators that skin fibroblasts from patients with Huntington's disease grow poorly in tissue culture. Matched pairs of Huntington's disease and control cultures grew at the same rate, but Huntington's disease cells grew to a significantly higher maximal density (P less than 0.02). This may indicate a genetically determined change in the cell surface or metabolic difference in Huntington's disease.