Publications by authors named "Ayla Pauwels"

Article Synopsis
  • This study systematically reviewed and analyzed data on motor progression in Parkinson's disease (PD), emphasizing that current tools for assessing treatment effects are heavily influenced by dopaminergic therapies.
  • It found that untreated PD patients showed a significantly higher motor progression rate of 4.5% per year compared to only 1.6% for those receiving dopaminergic drugs, indicating the importance of considering treatment status in studies.
  • The research suggests that long-term measurements of motor progression can still be effective even after starting dopaminergic medications, but calls for careful study designs to reduce confounding factors associated with symptom treatment.
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Predicting the long-term outcome of multiple sclerosis (MS) remains an important challenge to this day. As the gut microbiota is emerging as a potential player in MS, we investigated in this study whether gut microbial composition at baseline is related to long-term disability worsening in a longitudinal cohort of 111 MS patients. Fecal samples and extensive host metadata were collected at baseline and 3 months post-baseline, with additional repeated neurological measurements performed over (median) 4.

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Background: Predicting disability worsening in multiple sclerosis (MS) remains an important challenge. Glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) and neurofilament light chain (NfL) seem promising biomarkers. Studies investigating blood GFAP in relation to longitudinal outcome measures in MS are scarce.

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Background: Axonal degeneration is related to long-term disability in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). The underlying mechanism remains ill understood but appears to involve axonal energetic dysfunction. A globally impaired cerebral blood flow (CBF) has been observed in the normal-appearing white matter (NAWM) of patients with MS, which is probably related to astrocytic overexpression of endothelin-1 (ET-1).

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