On the occasion of the World Parkinson’s Day 2019, the Luxembourg Parkinson Association will be holding its annual conference today. Luxembourg is at the forefront of research on this neurodegenerative disease, with an ongoing multidimensional study involving all major biomedical research institutions in the country.
This year’s conference will cover a variety of subjects under the topic ‘My Parkinson and I’, ranging from alternative therapies and recent research advances such as the discovery of new biomarkers, to support initiatives for Parkinson patients. Namely, the programme includes interventions from Prof. Dr. Matthias Maschke of the Krankenhaus der Barmherzigen Brüder Trier, Prof. Dr. Rejko Krüger of the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedecine (LCSB), Dr. Joëlle Fritz of the ParkinsonNet Luxembourg initiative and Anne-Marie Hanff, of the National Centre of Excellence in Research on Parkinson’s Disease (NCER-PD).
Luxembourg is particularly active in the field of Parkinson’s disease (PD), having set up NCER-PD — a nation-wide multidisciplinary project on Parkinson’s disease (PD) — back in 2015. Supported by the National Research Fund (Fonds National de la Recherche – FNR) and coordinated by the LCSB, the study brings together the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH), IBBL, the Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg (CHL) and, as of 2018, the National Health Laboratory (Laboratoire National de Santé – LNS), in a concerted action to improve the early-stage diagnosis of the disease and the stratification of PD patients. Specifically, IBBL is involved in setting up Luxembourg’s first PD cohort, which includes samples of urine, blood, saliva, and stool from volunteer PD patients from Luxembourg and the Greater Region, as well as healthy controls. About 13,000 blood, urine, saliva, stool and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples have been collected to date.
The event will take place in the afternoon at the Centre Culturel ‘An der Eech’ in Leudelange, and will be followed by a reception and dinner. More details can be found here.