Possible introduction of Huntington's chorea into Pacific islands by New England whalemen

Abstract

Huntington's disease (HD) has been reported in two isolated South Pacific islands, New Britain in Papua New Guinea, and Malaita in the Solomon Islands. The earliest presumptive choreics in these foci were born in the latter part of the 19th century, prior to the colonial period. It is known that these islands were visited by certain New England whalers in the precolonial era, and inspection of the crew lists of these whalers shows many men with surnames common to families in New England known to have produced HD individuals. In some instances, the name, age, and origin of whalemen correspond with those of known choreic individuals. It is suggested that New England whalemen carrying the trait for HD introduced the disease to these islands.

The epidemiology of Huntington's disease

“…The interesting and plausible suggestion has been made that the gene could have been introduced by the crews of visiting whaling ships from North America, which were active in the sperm-whale fishery in the first half of the nineteenth century. Scrimgeour (1983) searched the records of whaling voyages and found that a number of crew members had surnames present in known HD families from New England, recorded in the Davenport und Muncey archives, preserved at the University of Minnesota. While no direct link has been proven, the predominance of New Englanders in the whaling industry and the frequent sexual relations with islanders make this a reasonable hypothesis for these small populations, where genetic drift could have subsequently increased the gene frequency in some cases.…”