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

276
total
1952
impact factor
7.07
average impact factor

Group Leader: Xavier Montalban Gairín

We observed that the baseline magnetic resonance imaging is a useful tool to identify patients with an increased risk of developing an aggressive multiple sclerosis (MS).  We investigated the role of different response criteria to immunomodulatory 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 pregnancy and breastfeeding do not significantly modify long term prognosis when a propensity matching and time dependent model is considered. We described the expression of bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) in chronic inflammatory MS lesions and their correlation with the inflammatory activity, suggesting that BMPs may have a role in MS pathogenesis. We ruled out the use of cerebrospinal fluid mitochondrial DNA as valuable diagnostic and disease activity biomarker in MS. We worked on the European palliative management guide, and the consensus on the management of the sphincter disorder of the MS patient.

VHIR Annual Report 2019