Cognitive processes of apathy in Huntington's disease show high sensitivity to disease progression.

Background: Disease-modifying treatments for Huntington's disease (HD) are entering clinical trials: there is a pressing need for objective outcome measures of disease progression. Our previous work showed an association between 2 novel, objective cognitive tasks and apathy - a core feature of disease progression in HD.
Objective: Evaluate the longitudinal validity and sensitivity of the novel Persistence and Maze tasks to assess their utility as clinical outcome measures in HD.
Methods: 83 participants positive for the HD gene and 54 controls performed a battery of established and novel tools, at baseline and 12 month follow up.
Results: The Maze task was found to be the most sensitive measure of change at 12 months, including the current gold-standard measure (the composite disease progression score).
Conclusion: The Maze task has potential as a novel outcome measure of disease progression in HD and may have utility in other major neurodegenerative diseases.
Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(© 2022 Published by Elsevier Ltd.)