Siri Hagen Kjølaas, a young psychologist, presented her PhD work about growing up in an HD family “Who sees the children in the shadow of Huntington’s disease” and discussed the main findings of her project.

Ellen Blinkenberg spoke about presymptomatic genetic testing. Ellen is a doctor and specialist in medical genetics. She had an easy and understandable talk about how genetics works when it comes to Huntington’s disease. For those who wanted, there was also the opportunity for individual conversations with Ellen after her presentation.

Astri Arnesen, the President of the European Huntington Association, was at the meeting to talk about research. There is great interest among the younger generations from HD families in Norway to hear how research is going and how far it has come. Astri prepared a simple and family-friendly presentation about what is happening in HD studies and trials worldwide. Since it is often difficult to have reliable and accurate information about HD research in lay language, this was a very useful and informative talk that gave a better insight into what is going on and where we are heading.

Geir Viksund, Head of the Norwegian HD Association, was also at the meeting and talked about what is happening in the Association and what are the plans for the near future.