Doctors achieve first successful treatment for Huntington’s

One of the cruellest and most devastating diseases – Huntington’s – has been successfully treated for the first time, the BBC writes.

The disease runs through families, relentlessly kills brain cells and resembles a combination of dementia, Parkinson’s and motor neurone disease.

An emotional research team became tearful as they described how data shows the disease was slowed by 75% in patients.

It means the decline you would normally expect in one year would take four years after treatment, giving patients decades of “good quality life”, Prof Sarah Tabrizi told BBC News.

The new treatment is a type of gene therapy given during 12 to 18 hours of delicate brain surgery.

“We never in our wildest dreams would have expected a 75% slowing of clinical progression,” she said.