Background: Worldwide prevalence estimates of Huntington disease (HD) vary widely, with no reliable information regarding the Jewish population in Israel.
Methods: This specialized tertiary single-center cross-sectional study assessed clinical, cognitive, and demographic characteristics of 84 HD patients who were treated at the Movement Disorder Unit of the Tel Aviv Medical Center, Israel.
Results: Our cohort was composed of one-third Ashkenazi Jews, 27% Mountain Jews (Caucasus Jews), 18% Sephardi Jews, and 21% Karaites, with both Mountain Jews and Karaites over-represented compared to their relevant proportion in the population of the state of Israel, which is less than 1%. No between-group differences were detected regarding the number of CAG (cytosine-adenine-guanine) repeats, age at onset, disease duration, years from symptom onset to diagnosis, gender, years of education, Unified Huntington Disease Rating Scale scores, or the Montreal Cognitive Assessment scores.
Conclusion: We detected clustering of HD among the population treated at our Medical Center, which has the only specialized HD clinic in the country, with a high percentage of HD among 2 relatively small subpopulations of Jews: Mountain Jews and Karaites.
Keywords: Huntington disease; Karaites; Mountain Jews.
© 2017 S. Karger AG, Basel.