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Make a choice prof. dr. T. van Laar JM Boertien

Project properties

Title	The Dutch Parkinson Cohort (DUPARC) 1
Keywords	neurodegenerative diseases Clinical Severity Score Parkinson disease
Researchers	prof. dr. T. van Laar JM Boertien
Nature of the research	Clinical research
Fields of study	movement sciences neurology nuclear medicine

Background / introduction

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder which is clinically defined by motor symptoms like rigidity, hypokinesia, postural instability and tremor as a result of dopaminergic neurodegeneration of the substantia nigra. Non-motor symptoms, such as cognitive impairment, visual disturbances, sleep disorders and constipation, greatly impact the quality of life of the patient as well. Currently, satisfactory treatment of these non-motor symptoms is hampered by our limited understanding of their etiology and the involvement of other neurotransmitter systems besides dopamine. Moreover, non-motor symptoms can already be present years before diagnosis. To adequately assess the impact and etiological significance of non-motor symptoms in PD, there is a need for prospective cohorts of de novo PD subjects who are treatment naïve at baseline, to eliminate the possible confounding influence of dopaminergic medication. Currently, such a cohort is being established in the UMCG, called the Dutch Parkinson Cohort (DUPARC), a well-characterized cohort of 80 untreated de novo PD subjects, aimed to include 150 patients by the end of 2019.

Research question / problem definition
The DUPARC cohort study is suitable for answering research questions related to the following motor and non-motor manifestations of PD: - Cognitive impairment - Cholinergic degeneration - Visual disturbances - Gut microbiome composition changes - Standardized motor scoring and response to treatment

Workplan

On average, two patients per week are seen for the DUPARC study in the UMCG for an extensive two-day clinical characterization. Students can be involved in all the practical parts of both the baseline and the follow-up visits, including for instance different imaging modalities (MRI, FDOPA-PET, FEOBV-PET), a complete neuropsychological examination and clinical assessment, optical coherence tomography (OCT) and the determination of the gut microbiome composition.