Objective: To assess feasibility and initial outcomes of a mindfulness-based intervention course in patients with pre-manifest, genetically confirmed Huntington’s disease (HD).

Background: Mindfulness-based intervention courses teach individuals how to use mindfulness to engender positive thoughts and reduce negative emotions including stress, anxiety, and depressed mood. Mindfulness-based intervention courses have been shown to help people with many different neurologic conditions but have not been extensively studied in HD (1). The aim of this pilot was to investigate the utility of a mindfulness course in improving quality of life in patients with pre-symptomatic and prodromal HD in a cohort of US-based participants.

Method: Individuals with pre-symptomatic and prodromal HD were recruited from the HD Society of America Center of Excellence at the University of Pennsylvania. Participants completed an 8-week group mindfulness course consisting of a 2-hour online session once per week with intervening asynchronous homework. Short surveys on mindfulness, stress, quality of life, anxiety and depression were completed before, immediately after, and 90 days following the course. Paired non-parametric Wilcoxon signed rank tests were used to compare survey responses within participants before and after course completion.

Results: 8 individuals participated in the study, 7 female and one male. Average age was 35.125y, SD: 11.53 range (21-53). Of the 7 participants who completed the post course surveys, 6/7 (85.7%) endorsed that they planned to use the mindfulness techniques taught in the course in the future. Written qualitative feedback was provided by participants to improve future iterations of the course (Tables 1, 2). The mindfulness course did not result in a statistically significant improvement in outcome measures in this small sample size.

Conclusion: This pilot study demonstrates the feasibility of an online mindfulness course amongst US-based participants with pre-manifest HD and avenues for improvement in subsequent course iterations. In the future, studies should be completed with a larger cohort of participants, potentially multi-center, with the goal of addressing statistical power, validity and reproducibility. Overall, mindfulness represents a low-side effect therapy that can be offered to patients with HD gene mutations.

Table 1: Overall Patient Perspectives

Table 2: Suggestions for Improvement

References: 1. Velissaris S, Davis MC, Fisher F, Gluyas C, Stout JC. A pilot evaluation of an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction program for people with pre-symptomatic Huntington’s disease. J Community Genet. 2023 Aug;14(4):395-405. doi: 10.1007/s12687-023-00651-1. Epub 2023 Jul 17. PMID: 37458974; PMCID: PMC10444936.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/a-mindfulness-based-intervention-course-in-pre-manifest-huntingtons-disease-analysis-of-pilot-data/