The Monsoon Summit 2019, the international neurology conference organised by the Kerala Association of Neurologists (KAN), which concluded here on Sunday, resolved to have a national neurological disease control mechanism.
V.G. Pradeep Kumar, organising secretary, said the KAN would conduct screening for prevalence and incidence of neurological disorders. Epilepsy, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, tremors and other movement disorders have a large prevalence in the State, he said.
K.P. Vinayan, academic convener, stressed the need for a disease-specific data registry. “The task demands both public and private participation,” he said.
Bindu Sankaran from the Children’s Hospital, Sydney, said the recent advances in genetic diagnoses and new gene discovery had become important in neurological diagnostics. The precision offered by molecular diagnosis had facilitated emergence of new successful treatment strategies in many of the hitherto untreatable disorders, she said.
Madhav Thambisetty, adjunct professor, John Hopkins University School of Medicine, spoke on the latest discoveries in bio-markers for early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease and identifying novel targets for effective treatments.
Sakkubai Naidu, professor, John Hopkins University, delivered the second KAN Oration on ‘White matter disorder in children’.