Clinical trial NCT06774443: Hinting Task for Huntington's Disease
Official title: Sensitivity of the Hinting Task in Patients with Huntington's Disease
Study type: OBSERVATIONAL
Overall status: NOT_YET_RECRUITING
Conditions: Huntington Disease
Keywords: Social Cognition
Theory of Mind
Hinting Task
Huntington
CAG repeat
Lead sponsor: University Medical Center Groningen
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2025-01-14
Enrollment: 52
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Maximum age (years): 74
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: no
Observational model: CASE_CONTROL
Time perspective: CROSS_SECTIONAL
Sampling method: PROBABILITY_SAMPLE
Study population: We aim to include 26 patients with premanifest HD and 26 patients with manifest HD. Patients will be recruited from the Enroll-HD sample of the UMCG and the Huntington outpatient clinic of Noorderbreedte in Grou. All stuParticipants of Enroll-HD that have given consent to be asked to take part in other studies of HD, will be asked to participate in the current study. The study will also be advertised on the website of the Dutch Huntington Society. Participants can sign themselves up via that advertisement. Inclusion and all other study-related activities will be performed by UMCG study staff.

Data of healthy controls on the Hinting Task has already been obtained from previous studies, and can be used in accordance with the FAIR data principles. Data of healthy controls that have given permission to use their data in similar studies will be included. Controls will be matched to patients so that sex and age distributions do not significantly differ between groups.

Brief summary: Huntington's disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder, characterized by movement disorders, behavioural disorders and cognitive decline. Especially the behavioural and cognitive symptoms of the disease lead to significant disability and burden for patients as well as caregivers. One of the cognitive domains affected by HD is social cognition. Social cognition is the ability to perceive, interpret and respond correctly to social information. Aspects of social cognition are emotion recognition, perspective taking (Theory of Mind), and emapathy. Social cognition problems can be related to behavioural problems, but to be able to study this relationship, it is important to be able to reliable measure social cognition impairments. There are a few social cognition tests available, but often they are not normd and validated for use in a Dutch neurological population. There is a lack of sensitive, simple, tests for measuring Theory of Mind in patients with HD. A promising test, that already has been proven valid in a psychiatric population, is the Hinting Task. The Hinting Task measures theory of mind through indirect speech, The Hinting task is a social cognition test, where hints are implicitly given in speech, which resembles what patients and caregivers frequently report as difficult in HD. The Hinting Task has already been translated into Dutch and is already being used in clinical parctice, but its sensitivity has not been studied yet in a neurological population. The aim of this study is to assess if the Hinting Task is sensitive in patients with HD and to relate the Hinting Task to other (social) cognitive measures, demographical characteristics and disease characteristics.


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Confirmed diagnosis of Huntington's disease via CAG-repeat length analysis
* Between 18 and 74 years of age
* Dutch speaking

Exclusion Criteria:

* Presence of serious psychiatric disorders or other neurological comorbidities

Primary outcomes:
measure: Performance on the Hinting Task
timeFrame: 2025-2026
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Relations of the Hinting Task with other variables
timeFrame: 2025-2026
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Groningen
country: Netherlands
facility: University Medical Center Groningen
Study officials:
affiliation: University Medical Center Groningen
name: Maraike Coenen
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: