Cell loss in the motor and cingulate cortex correlates with symptomatology in Huntington’s disease

Huntington's disease is an autosomal dominant inherited neurodegenerative disease with motor symptoms that are variably co-expressed with mood and cognitive symptoms, and in which variable neuronal degeneration is also observed in the basal ganglia and the cerebral cortex. We have recently shown that the variable symptomatology in Huntington's disease correlates with the variable compartmental pattern of GABAA receptor and cell loss in the striatum. To determine whether the phenotypic variability in Huntington's disease is also related to variable neuronal degeneration in the cerebral cortex, we undertook a double-blind study using unbiased stereological cell counting methods to determine the pattern of cell loss in the primary motor and anterior cingulate cortices in the brains of 12 cases of Huntington's disease and 15 controls, and collected detailed data on the clinical symptomatology of the patients with Huntington's disease from family members and clinical records. The results showed a significant association between: (i) pronounced motor dysfunction and cell loss in the primary motor cortex; and (ii) major mood symptomatology and cell loss in the anterior cingulate cortex. This association held for both total neuronal loss (neuronal N staining) and pyramidal cell loss (SMI32 staining), and also correlated with marked dystrophic changes in the remaining cortical neurons. There was also an association between cortical cell loss and striatal neuropathological grade, but no significant association with CAG repeat length in the Huntington's disease gene. These findings suggest that the heterogeneity in clinical symptomatology that characterizes Huntington's disease is associated with variation in the extent of cell loss in the corresponding functional regions of the cerebral cortex whereby motor dysfunction correlates with primary motor cortex cell loss and mood symptomatology is associated with cell loss in the cingulate cortex.