News

Members of the Duke Neurology Department contributed to 14 new peer-reviewed articles published this July, improving our understanding of neuroscience, charting a course for research in a post-COVID-19 world, and offering opportunities for advancing patient care. Simon Gregory, PhD, and Yong Chen, PhD, respectively co-authored articles offering new therapeutic avenues for muscle repair and chronic pain treatment. Wuwei “Wayne” Feng, MD, MS, was part of a consortium examining the impact of COVID-19 on the NIH’s StrokeNet and offering a vision for resuming clinical trials.

Nineteen thirty-eight was the last full season played by baseball slugger Lou Gehrig before amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) forced him to retire. He struggled to hit and field well for much of the season, and his final statistics—a .295 batting average, 29 home runs, 114 runs batted in—were unusually low for him. But in mid-season, Gehrig enjoyed a streak in which he seemed to regain his previous power.

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.

When facing an illness such as ALS, one in which there currently is no proven treatment to stop or reverse it, patients often look to clinical trials for options for living longer and better lives.

Lisa Hobson-Webb, MD, and Kathryn Nightingale, PhD, (Duke Biomedical Engineering) have received a $50,000 award from Duke MEDx to develop a multidisciplinary, imaging technology to effectively and non-invasively examine skeletal muscle.

Current and former members of the Duke Neurology Department celebrated the career of E. Wayne Massey, MD, virtually this year, to mark the neurologist’s contributions to patient care, training, and research. 

Members of the Duke Neurology Department continued to advance the fields of clinical and translational neuroscience this April. Our faculty contributed to the first major systematic review of self-management programs for epilepsy, helping to answer questions about what makes these programs more or less effective. Another article discussed the benefits of CN-105, a therapeutic agent that may help reduce the harmful neuro-inflammatory response associated with stroke, traumatic brain injury, and other conditions.

In response to the COVID-19 epidemic, DukeHealth has accelerated its services to treat patients remotely via video and audio calls. Before the epidemic, DukeHealth providers performed just 100 video calls and 50 audio calls per month; now our providers are giving 400 video calls and 300 audio calls per day.

What do a genetic analysis of the intersecting pathways between Alzheimer’s disease and depression, a national prize-winning essay examining the ethics of unionization for physicians, and a systematic review of the literature surrounding a new potential form of therapy for stroke recovery have in common? They’re all subjects of peer-reviewed journal articles written or co-written by members of the Neurology Department published this March.

This February, members of the Duke Department of Neurology contributed to 10 new research articles in peer-reviewed journals. At the microscopic level, new studies examined how ion channels in endothelial cells may contribute to hypertension associated with obesity, and reviewed how DNA damage contributes to neuronal death in Parkinson’s disease. And at the system-wide level, our Stroke team discussed the massive IMPROVE Stroke Care project, which includes a network of nearly 100 hospitals, and hundreds of other agencies and communities.