Preventive Neurology Unit Showcase

Yesterday alongside the launch of the second phase of PREDICT-PD (a new drive to recruit 10'000 participants to the study!) was the showcase of the Preventive Neurology Unit. The Preventive Neurology Unit is a new and exciting unit that is part of the Wolfson Institute at Queen Mary University London. The Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine has a proud history of leading the way in terms of cancer prevention and epidemiology with many high impact publications. Now, thanks to Barts Charity, we are trying to replicate some of the successful preventive techniques used in cancer and apply them to neurological diseases.

The showcase yesterday gave the three senior clinical lecturers the opportunity to explain some of their work and objectives as well as hearing from Professor Jack Cuzick and Professor Gavin Giovannoni about their hopes for this new unit.

The showcase began by Dr Charles Marshall explaining his work regarding the benefits and difficulties of diagnosing Alzheimer's disease as early as possible. Current research suggests that amyloid deposits can begin accumulating in patient's brains up to 20 years before they have any symptoms of dementia. This period before symptoms begin would be the ideal time to intervene with medications to prevent the onset of dementia but unfortunately there is no way to easily identify these people. Dr Marshall explained how the use of 'Brain Stress tests' could help to identify patients before they develop any symptoms of dementia and how his work will use these tests to see if people who will go onto develop Alzheimer's dementia can be identified earlier and therefore start treatments sooner.

Next up was Dr Alastair Noyce who explained the PREDICT-PD project which I am sure most readers of this blog are familiar with. Dr Noyce explained how the project evolved from a keyboard tapping test called the BRAIN test and now has 1000 participants who have been taking part over 5 years and will soon have 10'000 participants! The benefits of this research could be huge if we can begin to identify patients who are highly likely to develop Parkinson's before they suffer from any symptoms then we can begin to start trying to prevent Parkinson's in the first place. Dr Noyce also explained some fascinating results about Exenatide (a diabetes medication) which has recently been shown to potentially have some neuroprotective effect in Parkinson's and could be the first disease modifying medication for Parkinson's disease. Medications such as this would be ideal to use in further studies if PREDICT-PD can successfully identify those at high risk of Parkinson's.

The final talk about preventive approaches to Multiple Sclerosis was delivered by Dr Ruth Dobson. The complex links between EBV, childhood obesity and vitamin D levels were examined. Dr Dobson explained some of the intriguing results regarding EBV infection and Multiple Sclerosis and some of the difficulties of interpreting this relationship. The audience was also fascinated to hear about the links between foetal and neonatal vitamin D levels and MS. The main point that Dr Dobson emphasised is that a preventive approach to MS has to happen much earlier than the couple of years prior to diagnosis; the most important potential modifiable risk factors are all in early childhood or potentially in-utero!

Overall the showcase was very successful and the audience provided lots of insightful questions and interesting discussion. It is an exciting time to be working on preventive approaches to neurological disease and yesterday definitely highlighted that.