A medication that treats the major symptom of Huntington's disease has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Xenazine (tetrabenazine) is the first drug to treat chorea, the jerky involuntary movement that occurs in people with Huntington's disease. Huntington’s is an inherited disorder that affects about 30,000 people in the United States. 200,000 other people are at the verge of developing the disease because its symptoms usually occur between ages 30 and 50.

Chorea is an inconvenience that eventually ends up causing problems like the disability to talk or walk, Nancy Wexler, Ph.D., Higgins Professor of Neurophysiology in the departments of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University and president of the Hereditary Disease Foundation explained.

"A lot of patients won't go out because they are embarrassed by those movements," said Dr. Frederick J. Marshall, a University of Rochester Medical Center neurologist who led the clinical study that provided evidence of the drug's effectiveness.

This is the first ever approved treatment for any symptom of Huntington's disease. Due to the quite reduced number of patients suffering from it, the development and testing of medications was and still is a difficult process. Prestwick Pharmaceuticals is the manufacturer due to which some financial rewards for the scientists may occur after all. The medication has already been approved in Canada, Europe and Australia.

However, apart from not dealing with the condition completely, Xenazine has some potentially serious side effects, including suicidal behavior.

The cost of the medication is likely to be covered by Medicare and other government and private insurance plans.