Mount Reback syndrome

Named for the two doctors that classified it, Lester Adrian Mount and S. Reback, Mount-Reback Syndrome, or Mount’s Syndrome^[1], a form of Huntington's Chorea, is a rare hereditary disease that affects various muscular and nervous systems in the body.^[2] Passing to roughly fifty percent of the offspring, Mount’s Syndrome shares many of the same symptoms with Chorea but is caused by different factors and is not as severe. Lasting anywhere from a few minutes to several hours, the attacks or “episodes” only happen when the person is in an awake state. Being most severe at early and/or young ages, the symptoms tend to lessen as the infected person grows in age for reasons not exactly known.

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Causes

The main known causes of an episode on an infected person are but are not limited too:

• Moderate to high consumption of stimulants such as alcohol, caffeine, or nicotine.
• Low amounts of energy due to lack of sleep, illness, or physical fatigue.
• Moderate to high presence of stress.
• Hormone imbalances such as menstral cycles.^[1]

Symptoms

The most common symptom found in all of the episodes are varying degrees of involuntary tightening and shaking of the muscles in the arm and leg of the dominant side of the person infected. In more serious cases of an attack, symptoms include but are not limited to any or all of the following:

• More severe tensing and shaking of the muscles in the dominant side and in very severe cases both sides are affected and/or the muscles around the spine will tense up causing the person to remain in a hunched or bent position until the attack subsides.
• Swelling of the tongue and muscles around the throat making it difficult to speak. Often the tongue swells to a size that the mouth can not hold in and it will hang out.
• Blurring of the eye sight.

Because of the symptoms, during episodes the infected person often appears to be in a drunken or disabled state.^[2]

Remedies

There is no cure for Mount’s Syndrome that has been found yet, but the best way to take care of symptoms is to stay in motion so that the muscles do not have the opportunity to become too tense. Other ways of sub-siding the symptoms are:

• Having a person near you rub or massage your muscles to ease the tension.
• Taking muscle relaxing medication.
• Doing activities that will take your mind off the symptoms. Being distracted seems to help for unknown reasons.

References