Clinical Neuroimmunology : VHIR Annual Report 2020

Neurosciences

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Overview

The Neuroscience area is consolidating its position as one of the largest clusters of research labs working on neurological diseases across Europe. At present, the area comprises 14 groups with more than one hundred fully dedicated researchers in close contact with top clinicians in the hospital. These research groups pursue a better and multifaceted understanding of the etiopathogenic mechanisms underlying a large variety of mostly adult but also pediatric neurological disorders including stroke, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, primary headaches, epilepsy, neuromuscular disorders, and also neurosurgical and psychiatric pathologies. The area also integrates groups involved in neuroimaging, analysis and interpretation of high-throughput data, and gene therapy strategies to target inflammatory and neurodegenerative neurological conditions.

Publications

316
total
1898
impact factor
6.01
average impact factor

Group Leader: Xavier Montalban Gairín

We provided new data arguing in favor of including the optic nerve as a new region in the multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnostic criteria and led a European consensus on the use of brain and spinal cord atrophy measures in MS. We observed that a kappa free light chain index has a higher accuracy than IgG oligoclonal bands to diagnose MS at three years. We investigated the role of different response criteria to immunomodulatory oral drugs in relapsing-remitting MS and found that the early presence of clinical and radiological activity is a risk factor of long-term disability. We observed that menopause and oral contraception do not significantly modify long term prognosis when a propensity matching and time dependent model is considered. We identified the NLRP3 inflammasome as therapeutic target in patients with primary progressive multiple sclerosis and demonstrated that a commercial probiotic performs a beneficial effect in MS experimental once the experimental disease is established.

 

VHIR Annual Report 2020