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Novel Nut and Bolt Task Quantifies Motor Deficits in Premanifest and Manifest Huntington's Disease
Lucy M Collins, Faye Begeti, Francesca Panin1
1John van Geest Centre for Brain Repair, Cambridge, United Kingdom; Faculty of Medical Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Background:
We investigated the use of a simple novel nut and bolt task in premanifest and manifest Huntington's disease (HD) patients to detect and quantify motor impairments at all stages of the disease.
Methods:
Premanifest HD (n=24), manifest HD (n=27) and control (n=32) participants were asked to screw a nut onto a bolt in one direction, using three different sized bolts with their left and right hand in turn.
Results:
We identified some impairments at all stages of HD and in the premanifest individuals, deficits in the non-dominant hand correlated with disease burden scores.
Conclusion:
This simple, cheap motor task was able to detect motor impairments in both premanifest and manifest HD and as such might be a useful quantifiable measure of motor function for use in clinical studies.
