It commonly begins with contractions in one general area such as an arm or a leg that continue to progress throughout the rest of the body.

[2] The disease is caused by a dominant allele, meaning that the person affected needs only one copy of the mutated DYT1 gene to have symptoms.

[5] Each medication is started on a low dosage and gradually increased to higher doses as the disease progresses and the side effects are known for the individual.

A systematic review found that some patients benefit from deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery, but the studies may have been subject to financial bias.

The occurrence of torsion dystonia in the Ashkenazi Jewish population as stated by the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health of Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut; "Reports dating to the beginning of this century describe Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ) families with multiple cases of ITD either in siblings (Schwalbe 1908; Bernstein 1912; Abrahamson 1920) or in parents and offspring (Wechsler and Brock 1922; Mankowsky and Czerny 1929; Regensberg 1930).

Although they concluded that the gene frequency was higher in the AJ population than in non-Jews, no difference in mode of inheritance or disease mechanism was construed.

"[citation needed] A 1969 study of torsion dystonia patients found an average IQ 10 points higher than controls matched for age, sex and ethnic background.