Stroke Progress and Innovation Award for Marius de Groot and Ben Verhaaren

At the 2014 International Stroke Conference in San Diego, the first prize for the 2013 Stroke Progress and Innovation Awards was awarded to Marius de Groot and Ben Verhaaren, both PhD students with the department of Epidemiology and working with the Rotterdam Study. The prize was awarded for the paper "Changes in Normal-Appearing White Matter Precede Development of White Matter Lesions" published in Stroke, 2013.

The prize is awarded by Stroke, a journal from the American Heart association, to the article that has the most innovative approach, methodology or interpretation of existing data, out of all articles published in Stroke for that year. The award involves a cash award, a travel grant and a trophy. 

The awarded paper focused on the development of white matter lesions, a common finding on brain MRI for elderly participants. Regions of brain white matter that converted to white matter lesions were identified and compared to similar regions that did not convert. The authors found that tissue that converts is already different at baseline, which lends credibility to the idea that these lesions develop gradually and not instantaneously. 

Both first authors were supported by co-authors Renske de Boer, Stefan Klein, Albert Hofman, Aad van der Lugt, Arfan Ikram, Wiro Niessen and Meike Vernooij, a team from the departments of Epidemiology, Medical Informatics and Radiology, which is part of a larger collaboration between these departments. 

To read the article click here

http://my.americanheart.org/professional/ScienceNews/Highlights-from-Stroke-An-AHAASA-Journal_UCM_461163_Article.jsp