Skin fibroblasts in Huntington disease

We previously reported that skin fibroblasts with Huntington disease (HD) grew to higher maximal densities and, at early culture passages, attained more population doublings per week than did fibroblasts from control individuals. We also noted that HD cells were smaller and that larger colonies developed from single cells. In view of discrepant results reported from replications of the above studies, we undertook extensive blind studies with 10 coded pairs of HD and control cells in which all the skin biopsies were obtained by the same method, and the HD and control cells were grown identically at all times. No significant differences were found between HD and control cells in any of the above parameters in the current study. Some of the possible reasons for our failure to reproduce the previous results are discussed, chief among them may be the different treatment to which the HD and control cells might have been subjected prior to coming to our hands and the utilization of skin samples from different regions of the body.