Light therapy maker Lumie will provide light boxes for a research study that will examine the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions to improve the life and sleep quality of patients with Huntington’s disease, according to Huntington’s Disease News.
Cambridge, England-based light therapy specialist Lumie will supply 24 of its most powerful light boxes, called Lumie Brazil, for use in a Huntington’s disease research study at the Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine’s Neurology Unit.
The Lumies are being donated to the research project that is investigating the efficacy and tolerability of two non-pharmaceutical interventions to improve the life and sleep quality of Huntington’s disease patients. One is bright light therapy and the other is sleep restriction therapy. The project, scheduled to get underway this month, is expected take eight months.
Huntington’s disease (HD) is a complex neurological genetic disorder that currently has no cure. It causes motor, cognitive, and psychiatric symptoms due to a hereditary gene defect that damages certain nerve cells in the brain. The damage progressively worsens over time, and can affect movement, cognition (perception, awareness, thinking, judgment) and behavior, ending with devastating loss of motor and executive function.
Huntington’s starts with symptoms that can include personality changes, mood swings, fidgety movements, irritability, and altered behavior, although these signs are initially often overlooked or misdiagnosed, although a blood test can confirm a faulty HD gene. Research in the U.K. in 2012 found the figure for people affected by Huntington’s to be roughly 12 per 100,000.
