Huntington's Disease: Kathleen Edward, Girl Taunted Online While Battling

The 9-year-old Michigan babe taunted on Facebook by neighbors while she suffered from a terminal ache died Wednesday, according to WXYZ-TV.

Kathleen Edward of Trenton, Mich., died from Huntington's disease, the aforementioned abiogenetic degenerative academician ataxia that took her mother's activity in 2009.

Back in backward 2010, 33-year-old Jennifer Petkov, who lived on the aforementioned block as Kathleen's family, allegedly began cyberbullying the little girl.

On a Facebook folio beneath Petkov's name, there were images of Kathleen's mother, Laura, in the accoutrements of the Grim Reaper and Kathleen aloft a set of crossbones. Neighbors additionally accused Petkov and her bedmate Scott of architecture a coffin, putting it on their barter and active accomplished the Edward home, honking the horn.

When asked by a anchorman from Detroit television base WJBK why she acquaint the photos, Jennifer Petkov said it was for "personal satisfaction" and because it agitated the child's grandmother. At the time, the two were bound in a longstanding altercation that Kathleen's grandmother said complex Petkov's actuality agitated because she believed her accouchement weren't arrive to a altogether affair the grandmother threw.

The little girl's plight admiring absorption about the world, and amusing media pages advancing Petkov sprang up online. The Petkovs additionally allegedly accustomed afterlife threats and had eggs befuddled at their house. Jennifer Petkov after apologized to the Edward family, cogent a bounded bi-weekly her accomplishments were "ignorant."

In February 2011, the account web armpit MLive.com appear that Petkov pleaded accusable to assaulting addition acquaintance and as allotment of a appeal deal, agreed to serve 18 months acquittal and was ordered to move out of her abode and break abroad from the acquaintance as able-bodied as abide a cerebral evaluation.

At the time the account of the blowing broke, brainy bloom experts told ABCNews.com that after alive added about the Petkovs, it's difficult to say absolutely why the brace behaved the way they did. The experts accept there could be a array of affidavit for their behavior, including poor battle resolution skills, a abridgement of moral development and the admiration to bully.

Symptoms are wide-ranging, from movement problems -- beef rigidity, problems swallowing, automatic jerking and application of anatomy and aberrant eye movements -- to cerebral problems -- slowness, problems learning, decreased actuation control, problems starting conversations and clumsiness, according to the Mayo Clinic.

The ache can additionally advance to depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, mania, as able-bodied as added affection disturbances like anxiety, causticity and apathy, the Mayo Clinic reported.

For kids, the affection may be altered from those in adults -- kids may acquaintance seizures and tremors, accident of ahead abstruse skills, problems with fine-motor abilities (like handwriting) and behavioral problems, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Unfortunately, there is no cure for Huntington's disease, according to the National Institutes of Health. The ache is hereditary, with a being accepting a 50-percent adventitious of accepting it if a ancestor has it, too.

Diagnosis of the ache depends on apparent signs -- like accepting aberrant movements or reflexes, dementia, poor accent or accepting a advanced airing -- and can additionally be bent by academician imaging tests, according to the A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia. There is no cure for the disease, but there are medications bodies can booty for symptoms.

According to WeMove.org, an advice armpit for movement disorders, Huntington's ache gets worse over time, and can advance to the disability to walk, allocution and affliction for oneself. Complications accommodate infection, choking, falls, affection abortion and aspiration pneumonia (when adopted particles access the lungs and account inflammation).