David J Werring | |
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Nationality | British |
Education | Guy’s Hospital Medical School, King's College London |
Alma mater | University College London |
Occupation(s) | Neurologist, Clinical researcher, Stroke physician |
Medical career | |
Institutions | |
Sub-specialties | Neurology |
Research | Stroke |
David John Werring (born October 1967) is a British physician, neurologist, and academic specialising in stroke. He is professor of Neurology at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology and current head of Stroke Research Centre and the department of Brain Repair & Rehabilitation at UCL.
Werring received his Bachelor in Neurosciences in 1989 and his Bachelor in Medicine/Bachelor in Surgery from Guy's Hospital Medical School in 1992. He became a Member of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the United Kingdom (MRCP) in 1995 and finished his PhD in clinical neurology at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology in 2000. [1] After completing his clinical training in neurology and stroke medicine in 2004, he was appointed consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, University College Hospital and Watford General Hospital in 2005. [2] Werring was made Reader in clinical neurology and honorary consultant neurologist in 2008, became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP) in 2012 and was made full professor at UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology in 2015. In 2017, he became head of the research department of Brain Repair & Rehabilitation at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology. [2]
Werring is a recognized expert in the field of stroke, chaired the UK Stroke Forum 2020-2022 and is President of the British and Irish Association of Stroke Physicians since December 2023. [3] [4]
The core field of research of Werring is stroke, in particular cerebral small vessel disease, intracerebral hemorrhage and cerebral amyloid angiopathy. [2] He has published more than 460 peer-reviewed articles on those topics and in other fields of clinical neurology. [2] Werring has led large collaborative studies investigating cerebral microbleeds and has expertise in neuroimaging, with a focus on brain MRI. [1] He is currently the primary investigator of a large multi-centre study investigating the timing of oral anticoagulation after ischemic stroke, founded by the British Heart Foundation [5] and has been involved in several studies investigating the influence of COVID-19 and respective vaccines on stroke. [6] He has an h-index of 103, [7] and is an editor of the Queen Square textbook of Neurology and editorial board member of several scientific journals, including the European Stroke Journal, International Journal of Stroke, and the European Journal of Neurology. [8] [9] [10]
A transient ischemic attack (TIA), commonly known as a mini-stroke, is a temporary (transient) stroke with noticeable symptoms that end within 24 hours. A TIA causes the same symptoms associated with a stroke, such as weakness or numbness on one side of the body, sudden dimming or loss of vision, difficulty speaking or understanding language or slurred speech.
Angiopathy is the generic term for a disease of the blood vessels. This also refers to the condition of damage or rupture of small blood vessels. The best known and most prevalent angiopathy is diabetic angiopathy, a common complication of chronic diabetes.
Stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functioning properly.
A thunderclap headache is a headache that is severe and has a sudden onset. It is defined as a severe headache that takes seconds to minutes to reach maximum intensity. Although approximately 75% are attributed to "primary" headaches—headache disorder, non-specific headache, idiopathic thunderclap headache, or uncertain headache disorder—the remainder are secondary to other causes, which can include some extremely dangerous acute conditions, as well as infections and other conditions. Usually, further investigations are performed to identify the underlying cause.
Cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) is a form of angiopathy in which amyloid beta peptide deposits in the walls of small to medium blood vessels of the central nervous system and meninges. The term congophilic is sometimes used because the presence of the abnormal aggregations of amyloid can be demonstrated by microscopic examination of brain tissue after staining with Congo red. The amyloid material is only found in the brain and as such the disease is not related to other forms of amyloidosis.
Desmoteplase is a novel, highly fibrin-specific "clot-busting" (thrombolytic) drug in development that reached phase III clinical trials. The Danish pharmaceutical company, Lundbeck, owns the worldwide rights to Desmoteplase. In 2009, two large trials were started to test it as a safe and effective treatment for patients with acute ischaemic stroke. After disappointing results in DIAS-3, DIAS-4 was terminated, and in December 2014 Lundbeck announced that they would stop the development of desmoteplase.
Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), also known as hemorrhagic stroke, is a sudden bleeding into the tissues of the brain, into its ventricles, or into both. An ICH is a type of bleeding within the skull and one kind of stroke. Symptoms can vary dramatically depending on the severity, acuity, and location (anatomically) but can include headache, one-sided weakness, numbness, tingling, or paralysis, speech problems, vision or hearing problems, memory loss, attention problems, coordination problems, balance problems, dizziness or lightheadedness or vertigo, nausea/vomiting, seizures, decreased level of consciousness or total loss of consciousness, neck stiffness, and fever.
The ABCD2 score is a clinical prediction rule used to determine the risk for stroke in the days following a transient ischemic attack (TIA, a condition in which temporary brain dysfunction results from oxygen shortage in the brain). Its usefulness was questioned in a 2015 review as it was not found to separate those who are at low from those who are at high risk of future problems. A high score correctly predicted 87% of the people who did have a stroke in the following 7 days but also many people who did not have problems.
Steven Laureys is a Belgian neurologist. He is principally known as a clinician and researcher in the field of neurology of consciousness.
Reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome is a disease characterized by a weeks-long course of thunderclap headaches, sometimes focal neurologic signs, and occasionally seizures. Symptoms are thought to arise from transient abnormalities in the blood vessels of the brain. In some cases, it may be associated with childbirth, vasoactive or illicit drug use, or complications of pregnancy. If it occurs after delivery it may be referred to as postpartum cerebral angiopathy.
Cerebral atherosclerosis is a type of atherosclerosis where build-up of plaque in the blood vessels of the brain occurs. Some of the main components of the plaques are connective tissue, extracellular matrix, including collagen, proteoglycans, fibronectin, and elastic fibers; crystalline cholesterol, cholesteryl esters, and phospholipids; cells such as monocyte derived macrophages, T-lymphocytes, and smooth muscle cells. The plaque that builds up can lead to further complications such as stroke, as the plaque disrupts blood flow within the intracranial arterioles. This causes the downstream sections of the brain that would normally be supplied by the blocked artery to suffer from ischemia. Diagnosis of the disease is normally done through imaging technology such as angiograms or magnetic resonance imaging. The risk of cerebral atherosclerosis and its associated diseases appears to increase with increasing age; however there are numerous factors that can be controlled in attempt to lessen risk.
Sarah Joanna Tabrizi FMedSci FRS is a British neurologist and neuroscientist in the field of neurodegeneration, particularly Huntington's disease. She is a Professor and Joint Head of the Department of Neurodegenerative Diseases at the UCL Institute of Neurology; the founder and Director of the UCL Huntington's Disease Centre; a Principal Investigator at the UK Dementia Research Institute at UCL; and an Honorary Consultant Neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London, where she established the Multidisciplinary Huntington's Disease Clinic. The UCL Huntington’s Disease Centre was officially opened on 1 March 2017 by UCL President and Provost Professor Michael Arthur.
A mobile stroke unit(MSU) is an ambulance that furnishes services to diagnose, evaluate, and/or treat symptoms of an acute stroke. It may contain, in addition to the normal ambulance equipment, a device for brain imaging (computerized tomography), a point-of-care laboratory and telemedical interaction between ambulance and hospital (videoconferencing, exchange of videos of patient examination and CT scans). Thus, this specialized ambulance includes all the tools necessary for hyperacute assessment and treatment of stroke patients and diagnosis-based triage directly at the emergency site.
Joanna Marguerite Wardlaw is a Scottish physician, radiologist, and academic specialising in neuroradiology and pathophysiology. Wardlaw worked as a junior doctor before specialising as a radiologist. She continues to practice medicine as an Honorary Consultant Neuroradiologist with NHS Lothian. She has spent her entire academic career at the University of Edinburgh.
Embolic stroke of undetermined source (ESUS) is an embolic stroke, a type of ischemic stroke, with an unknown origin, defined as a non-lacunar brain infarct without proximal arterial stenosis or cardioembolic sources. As such, it forms a subset of cryptogenic stroke, which is part of the TOAST-classification. The following diagnostic criteria define an ESUS:
Mary M. Reilly FRCP is an Irish neurologist who works at National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. She studies peripheral neuropathy. She is the President of the Association of British Neurologists.
Élisabeth Tournier-Lasserve is a French neurologist, medical geneticist, university professor and hospital practitioner in genetics. Together with three colleagues, she was the co-recipient of the Brain Prize in 2019, the world's largest brain research prize.
Ava Easton is a health scientist and researcher who specialises in encephalitis, acquired brain injury and narrative medicine, and is considered a world expert in her field of Encephalitis patient outcomes and quality of life. She is the current Chief Executive of Encephalitis International, a non-profit organisation which provides support and resources for those affected by the neurological disease of Encephalitis, and collaborates with various organisations on research into the disease.
The Boston criteria version 2.0 is a set of guidelines designed to diagnose cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA), a disease that affects small blood vessels in the brain, particularly those in the cortex and leptomeninges. Although the gold standard for diagnosis is histopathological examination, the Boston criteria provide clinicians with a probabilistic approach for diagnosis largely based on imaging characteristics.
Annemarei Ranta is a New Zealand academic neurologist, and is a full professor at the University of Otago, specialising in stroke care.