Journal of Neurology

, Volume 259, Issue 5, pp 921–928 | Cite as

Microcirculation response to local cooling in patients with Huntington’s disease

  • Ziva Melik
  • Jan Kobal
  • Ksenija Cankar
  • Martin Strucl
Original Communication
First Online:
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:

Abstract

Altered autonomic nervous system (ANS) functioning in early stages of Huntington’s disease (HD) has been suggested, presumably due to distorted high-order autonomic control. ANS functioning in the early stages of HD was further investigated. Laser-Doppler (LD) flux in the skin of the fingertips, heart rate (HR), HR variability, systolic and diastolic blood pressure were measured during rest and during a 6 min cooling of one hand at 15°C. Data of 15 presymptomatic gene mutation carriers (PHD), 15 early symptomatic HD patients (EHD), and two groups of 15 age- and sex-matched controls were compared. The area under the low frequency (LF) and high frequency (HF) bands of the HR variability spectrum were calculated. An augmented reduction of cutaneous LD flux was found in response to the direct cooling in the PHD group (37.5 ± 8.5% of resting value) compared to the PHD controls (67.27 ± 8.4%) (p < 0.05). In addition, the PHD group had higher (LF/(LF + HF) index of primary sympathetic modulation of the HR at rest (53.6 ± 3.3) compared to the EHD patients (39.7 ± 4.2) (p < 0.05). In the EHD group, a significantly smaller change of HR during cooling (100.26 ± 1.2%) was found compared to the EHD controls (95.9 ± 1.0%) (p < 0.05). The results are in line with the hypothesis that ANS dysfunction occurs even in PHD subjects. Further, they support the hypothesis that dysfunction of the high-order autonomic centres are involved in HD.

Keywords

Huntington’s disease Central autonomic network Heart rate variability Microcirculation Local cooling Laser-Doppler flow 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The study was supported by Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology (Grant No.: PO-510-381), Slovenia.

Conflict of interest

None.

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag 2011

Authors and Affiliations

  • Ziva Melik
    • 1
  • Jan Kobal
    • 2
  • Ksenija Cankar
    • 1
  • Martin Strucl
    • 1
  1. 1.Medical FacultyInstitute of Physiology, University of LjubljanaLjubljanaSlovenia
  2. 2.Department of NeurologyUniversity Medical Centre LjubljanaLjubljanaSlovenia

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