News

Gender has profound, complex effects across all fields of health, and neurology is no exception. Biological differences such as sex hormones across the life cycle affect the symptoms and onset of Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, and other conditions. Cultural mores mean that women do most of the caregiving for loved ones with Alzheimer’s disease, even as they are at greater risk than men for developing the condition. Even history plays a part, as for generations women have been left out of clinical trials.

Jaskiran "Kiran" Vidwan, DO, first became interested in both neurology and head and facial pain as a medical student, when a rotation with a headache specialist showed her the complexity of both headache conditions and the therapies used to treat them. Now, as our newest faculty member in our growing Headache and Pain Division she’s working with patients of her own to make sure they understand the nature of their conditions and receive the best possible care.

When Ashley Underwood, PA-C, MMS, joined our providers at our Morreene Road Clinic this summer, it was both a return to a previous role in headache management and an evolution of her work treating patients at Duke Pain Medicine. In this week’s “Spotlight” interview, Underwood talks to us about how her work and her patients’ needs in each of these settings compare.

In May 2020, members of the Duke Neurology Department contributed to nine new peer-reviewed journal articles. At the clinical level, a new study protocol will test the safety of a promising drug for reducing the consequences neural inflammation, while another shares more than a decade of knowledge about improving patient engagement in ALS research. Other studies, meanwhile, answered questions about how our brains and minds function, such as a NeuroImage study that found older and younger adults used different regions of the brain when performing the same task.

A peripherally acting opioid with multifunctional agonistic properties has shown to provide peripheral pain relief in morphine-tolerant mice with minimal side effects associated with classic opioids. The drug could serve as a potential candidate for treating pain disorders in humans, according to a study in the August 2019 issue of the British Journal of Pharmacology.