U. S. researchers suggest a medication studied in Alzheimer's patients may benefit the people suffering from Huntington's disease.

In a research, done at the University of Rochester in New York and led by Dr. Karl Kieburtz, it was found Huntington's disease patients taking the Alzheimer's medication latrepirdine had

improved scores for thinking, learning and memory skills. It was also found that scores of those in the placebo group remained steady over the study period.

Huntington's disease is a hereditary neurodegenerative disorder leading to death within 20 years of onset. Its current treatment treats motor symptoms but not the loss of cognitive abilities

that occur early on in the disease.

According to study,"Taken together, our data suggest that latrepirdine, at a dosage of 20 milligrams three times daily, is well tolerated for 90 days in patients with Huntington's disease and may have a beneficial effect on cognition."

Kieburtz and colleagues randomly assigned 46 patients with mild to moderate Huntington's disease to latrepirdine treatment and the other 45 to a matching placebo and found 87 percent of

latrepirdine patients completed the study vs. 82 percent in the control group.

Reported in the Archives of Neurology, the study found adverse event rates were 70 percent in the treatment group vs. 80 percent in the placebo group.