“On the occasion of World Brain Week 2023, numerous initiatives aimed at the public will take place throughout Italy from 13 to 19 March. The objectives of the campaign are: to spread the importance of brain functions among the population, to promote knowledge of acute and chronic neurological diseases and to make people understand how fundamental it is to maintain a healthy brain at all ages. To this end, seminars, insights and debates will be organized in all neurological centers throughout our country, open to all, not just to specialists in the sector”. So Alfredo Berardelli, president of the Italian Society of Neurology (Sin), in the seventh episode of the monthly column ‘Protect your brain, entrust yourself to the neurologist’ dedicated to the World Brain Week, a project born from the collaboration between Sin and time.news with the aim of increasing knowledge on neurological pathologies and on the figure of the neurologist, but also and above all to raise awareness population to entrust themselves to the care of this specialist when the first symptoms appear.
“Neurological diseases – underlines Berardelli – have a profound effect on the quality of life of patients and also on the medical assistance necessary for these patients, for this reason it is essential to make them known”. The Ministry of Health estimates that diseases of the nervous system, for which the intervention of a neurologist is required, have an incidence of new cases in our country each year equal to 7.5% of the population and a prevalence of 30%. To these numbers must be added neurological diseases that for various reasons arrive at the specialist too late or do not arrive at all such as narcolepsy, headaches or dementias.
“With the title that we have chosen for this edition ‘The new era of the brain’ – underlines President Sin – we want to make it clear that in recent years there has been considerable progress in understanding the causes and mechanisms underlying many neurological diseases, in particular of the chronic ones: Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, among the most common. Only a knowledge of the mechanisms that determine these diseases will be able to provide us with all the elements to develop new therapies. And that’s what’s happening. For Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease we see the possibility of having new therapies for these patients”.
The technological innovation we are witnessing and the development of new biological drugs – according to Berardelli – is opening a new era in the treatment of these pathologies. “Having understood that many of these chronic neurological diseases are caused by smoking, by the deposition of abnormal proteins that become toxic and damage brain neurons – he explains – therapies are being developed against these proteins”. What innovations can we expect in the near future in this area? “Possible new therapeutic approaches – she concludes – will be represented by the use of monoclonal antibodies directed towards some toxic proteins that have been identified both in Alzheimer’s disease and in Parkinson’s disease. Furthermore, the idea of neuro-modulation of brain activity in some brain areas is increasingly developing, for example in Parkinson’s disease”.
Promoted in Italy as every year since 2010 by Sin, coordinated by the European Dana Alliance for the Brain in Europe and by the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives in the United States, Brain Week is the result of an international coordination involving neuroscientific societies from all over the world. the world and to which the Italian Society of Neurology has been a member since the 2010 edition.