Vasomotor hyporeactivity in the anterior cerebral artery during motor activation in Huntington's disease patients

This experiment used functional transcranial Doppler ultrasonography to dem onstrate that brood flow velocity in the anterior cerebral artery is hypore active in Huntington's disease (HD) patients during maze testing (P<0.05). These vascular changes are due to tracing, as opposed to problem solving, c omponents of the maze task. Using logistic regression, the reactivity of th e ACA during activation is able to categorize patients as being either gene negative, or positive, for HD (P=0.0007). The possible role that nitric ox ide/peroxynitrite may play in this phenomena is discussed. (C) 2000 Elsevie r Science B.V. All rights reserved.