Sue Ellen Leurgans [1] [2] [3] is a biostatistician known for her work on disorders of human movement, including those caused by occupational injury and Parkinson's disease. She is a professor of neurological sciences at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. [4]
Leurgans graduated in statistics from Princeton University, [4] and earned her Ph.D. in statistics in 1978 from Stanford University. Her dissertation, Asymptotic Distribution Theory in Generalized Isotonic Regression, was supervised by Thomas W. Sager. [5] [6] She was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington. [4]
Leurgans is one of the authors of the 2007 revision of the Unified Parkinson's disease rating scale. [7] She was president of the Caucus for Women in Statistics in 1990. [8] She is married to physicist Cosmas Zachos.
Essential tremor (ET), also called benign tremor, familial tremor, and idiopathic tremor, is a medical condition characterized by involuntary rhythmic contractions and relaxations of certain muscle groups in one or more body parts of unknown cause. It is typically symmetrical, and affects the arms, hands, or fingers; but sometimes involves the head, vocal cords, or other body parts. Essential tremor is either an action (intention) tremor—it intensifies when one tries to use the affected muscles during voluntary movements such as eating and writing—or it is a postural tremor, which occurs when holding arms outstretched and against gravity. This means that it is distinct from a resting tremor, such as that caused by Parkinson's disease, which is not correlated with movement. Unlike Parkinson's disease, essential tremor may worsen with action.
Parkinsonism is a clinical syndrome characterized by tremor, bradykinesia, rigidity, and postural instability. Both hypokinetic as well as hyperkinetic features are displayed by Parkinsonism. These are the four motor symptoms found in Parkinson's disease (PD) – after which it is named – dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), Parkinson's disease dementia (PDD), and many other conditions. This set of symptoms occurs in a wide range of conditions and may have many causes, including neurodegenerative conditions, drugs, toxins, metabolic diseases, and neurological conditions other than PD.
The Hoehn and Yahr scale is a commonly used system for describing how the symptoms of Parkinson's disease progress. It was originally published in 1967 in the journal Neurology by Margaret Hoehn and Melvin Yahr and included stages 1 through 5. Since then, a modified Hoehn and Yahr scale was proposed with the addition of stages 1.5 and 2.5 to help describe the intermediate course of the disease. It has been shown that HY stage discrimination can be automated, even with patients who cannot support themselves.
In the management of Parkinson's disease, due to the chronic nature of Parkinson's disease (PD), a broad-based program is needed that includes patient and family education, support-group services, general wellness maintenance, exercise, and nutrition. At present, no cure for the disease is known, but medications or surgery can provide relief from the symptoms.
Dihydroergocryptine (DHEC), sold under the brand names Almirid and Cripar among others, is a dopamine agonist of the ergoline group that is used as an antiparkinson agent in the treatment of Parkinson's disease. It is taken by mouth.
The unified Parkinson's disease rating scale (UPDRS) is used to follow the longitudinal course of Parkinson's disease. The UPD rating scale is the most commonly used scale in the clinical study of Parkinson's disease.
Enrico Fazzini is an American neurologist. He is considered an expert on Parkinson's disease and has published numerous research publications on the subject. He has been involved in a number of clinical trials for new pharmaceutical treatments for Parkinson's disease. He attended the University of Osteopathic Medicine and Health Sciences in Des Moines, Iowa. He is board certified in neurology by both the M.D. and D.O. medical boards. He began his practice in 1989. Dr. Enrico Fazzini completed his neurology training at Boston University in 1987 and his fellowship in Movement Disorders at Columbia Presbyterian in 1989. In addition to being a neurologist, Fazzini has a Ph.D. in Behavioral Neuroscience from Boston University and is an expert on the diagnosis and treatment of patients with traumatic brain injuries.
Ann Martin Graybiel is an Institute Professor and a faculty member in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. She is an expert on the basal ganglia and the neurophysiology of habit formation, implicit learning, and her work is relevant to Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, obsessive–compulsive disorder, substance abuse and other disorders that affect the basal ganglia.
Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term neurodegenerative disease of mainly the central nervous system that affects both the motor and non-motor systems of the body. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease progresses, non-motor symptoms become more common. Usual symptoms include tremors, slowness of movement, rigidity, and difficulty with balance, collectively known as parkinsonism. Parkinson's disease dementia, falls and neuropsychiatric problems such as sleep abnormalities, psychosis, mood swings, or behavioral changes may arise in advanced stages as well.
Anne Buckingham Young is an American physician and neuroscientist who has made major contributions to the study of neurodegenerative diseases, with a focus on movement disorders like Huntington's disease and Parkinson's disease. Young completed her undergraduate studies at Vassar College and earned a dual MD/PhD from Johns Hopkins Medical School. She has held faculty positions at University of Michigan and Harvard University. She became the first female chief of service at Massachusetts General Hospital when she was appointed Chief of Neurology in 1991. She retired from this role and from clinical service in 2012. She is a member of many academic societies and has won numerous awards. Young is also the only person to have been president of both the international Society for Neuroscience and the American Neurological Association.
The Lee Silverman Voice Treatment – LOUD is a treatment for speech disorders associated with Parkinson's disease (PD). It focuses on increasing vocal loudness and is delivered by a speech therapist in sixteen one-hour sessions spread over four weeks. A derivative of this treatment, known as LSVT BIG, is used in treating movement aspects of Parkinson's disease.
Joseph Jankovic is an American neurologist and professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. He is the Distinguished Chair in Movement Disorders and founder and director of the Parkinson's Disease Center and Movement Disorders Clinic.
The Parkinson's Foundation is a national organization that funds research and provides educational resources to Parkinson's disease patients and caregivers. The Parkinson's Foundation was established in 2016 through the merger of the National Parkinson Foundation and the Parkinson's Disease Foundation. The Parkinson's Foundation has headquarters in Miami and New York City, in addition to 17 chapters throughout the United States.
Edna Schechtman was an Israeli statistician, a professor emeritus of statistics at the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She is best known for development of statistical tools that utilize the Gini Mean Difference (GMD) as the measure of association.
Wilma Sue Tilton Griffin is an American neuroscientist best known for her contributions regarding the role of neuroinflammation in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative conditions. She conceived a "cytokine cycle" by which interleukin 1 and other paracrine factors conspire with one another to create a "feed-forward" cooperativity, thus establishing the premise for a progressive disease. Griffin is the Alexa and William T. Dillard Professor in Geriatric Research and director of research at the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. She is also the founding Chief Editor of the Journal of Neuroinflammation.
Nansie S. Sharpless was an American biochemist. She was an associate professor of psychiatry and neurology and Chief of the Clinical Neuropsychopharmacology Laboratory at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Deaf from the age of fourteen, Sharpless encouraged deaf people to consider careers in scientific research. She also served as the president of the Foundation for Science and the Handicapped.
Susanne A. Schneider is a German neurologist at the Ludwig Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany who is known for her work in movement disorders.
Cyntha Anne Struthers is a Canadian mathematical statistician whose research topics include missing data in longitudinal studies and proportional hazards models. She is an associate professor of statistics and actuarial science at the University of Waterloo, and the former president of the Caucus for Women in Statistics.
Carolyn Mary Sue is an Australian physician-scientist, professor and research director. She has been the Executive Director of the Kolling Institute of Medical Research since 2019 and is also Director of Neurogenetics at Royal North Shore Hospital, Director of the Centre of Excellence for Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders, and Director of the National Centre for Adult Stem Cell Research. Sue specialises in complex neurogenetic conditions and runs tertiary referral clinics for patients with diseases such as Parkinson's, mitochondrial diseases, and other inherited movement disorders. Her research has identified several previously-unknown mutations that cause neurogenetic disease.
Christine Klein is a German physician who is a professor of neurology and neurogenetics at the University of Lübeck. Her research considers the molecular genetics of movement disorders. She is a Fellow of the European Academy of Neurology, former President of the German Neurological Society and incoming President of the European Section of the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.