Clinical Neurology

Research activity at neurology is strongly patient-oriented. Scientific questions arise from daily clinical practice and are solved by means of clinical/interventional studies and translational studies using biobank material.

Research fields include common neurological diseases such as epilepsy, movement disorders, acute stroke and multiple sclerosis but also sleep disorders, like narcolepsy, and more rare disorders like neurogenetic disorders, for ex Huntington´s, and low-grade gliomas. Scientific fields like distrubances in the autonomic nervous system have been acknowledged here, and the development of treatments, have lead to successful achivements of our unit.

A common focus is ”Neurotherapy”, a field where our unit for a long time achieved a strong position for developing treatments against neurological disease. Such examples are pharmacotherapy administered vie the gut in Parkinson´s disease, and allogenic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) against MS, further advanced imaging diagnostics in the mapping of brain tumours, and shunt operations in normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH).

Clinical and interventional studies

- In collaboration with the PET Centre, the value of ¹¹C-L-DOPA and ¹⁸F-FDG-PET is studied for differential diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, ¹¹C-flumazenil as a tracer for focal epilepsy and ¹¹C-methionine in low-grade gliomas.

- Advanced neuroimaging techniques are evaluated, in collaboration with the Department of Neuroradiology, for diagnosis and follow-up of normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH), multiple sclerosis (MS), neurogenetic disorders, focal epilepsy, brain tumors, stroke and movement disorders.

- Neurology in Uppsala was first in Sweden to use botulinum toxin, a drug that in addition to focal dystonia is used also for spasticity after stroke and hyperhidrosis, and was first worldwide to use intestinal levodopa/carbidopa gel infusion in advanced Parkinson’s disease. A multicenter trial has been initiated to compare the efficacy of intestinal levodopa/carbidopa gel infusion versus of deep brain stimulation.

- Since 2004, over 100 patients with aggressive MS have beeen treated with haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) with a strongly favourable effect on disease activity. A number of prospective trials are ongoing, including a study comparing HSCT with natalizumab in these patients is ongoing.

- Epidemiological studies of narcolepsy, and also on the efficiency, safety, and sociodemographic distribution among recently adopted treatment options in epilepsy are performed.

Clinical translational studies

Translational projects include pathogenetic studies of hereditary neuromuscular disorders and white matter diseases, immunological studies of MS, pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic modelling in Parkinson’s disease, identification of prognostic and predictive biomarkers in tumor tissues of adult low-grade gliomas, and in serum and CSF of patients with ALS, NPH and Parkinson´s disease.