At the end of Dystonia Europe’s annual conference Dystonia Days, President Adam Kalinowski presented the David Marsden Award to Dr Susanne Knorr from the University Hospital in Würzburg Germany, coincidentally the same place that last year’s winner was from.
Susanne then went on to present her research ‘The evolution of dystonia-like movements in TOR1A rats after transient nerve injury is accompanied by dopaminergic dysregulation and abnormal oscillatory activity of a central motor network’. Quite a mouthful for those of us who aren’t researchers! My own understanding of the research is that Susanne wanted to create an animal model which was similar to a human patient with a type of dystonia. The animals were rats and they were given a crush injury of the sciatic nerve after which they displayed dystonia like movements. She succeeded in creating the model and could also show that DBS reduced the dystonic symptoms. This is only my own interpretation and I am not a medical researcher so please watch her video on our YouTube channel!
Dr Knorr said:
“Winning the David Marsden Award is a great honour for me, to see that basic scientific research in the field of dystonia has achieved recognition, because we first need to understand the pathomechanism of dystonia, then we can finally establish new treatment strategies for dystonia patients.”
Gill Ainsley, Secretary Dystonia Europe
