Bruno Dubois is Professor of Neurology at Pierre et Marie Curie University (Paris 6). He is Director of the Institute for Memory and Alzheimer’s Disease (IM2A) at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. He also heads the INSERM “Cognition, Neuroimaging and Brain Diseases” research unit at the Brain and Spinal Cord Institute (ICM) in the same hospital. He coordinates the National Reference Center “Rare Dementias” and the National Multisite Center “Malades Alzheimer Jeunes“. He has published numerous works, notably on anatomical and biochemical studies of central cholinergic systems in rodents and in humans, on cognitive and behavioral disorders in patients with subcortical diseases or dementia with particular reference to memory and executive functions. He recently organized the expert consensus behind the new diagnostic criteria for Alzheimer’s disease and its new definition. His work continues to explore this definition, further exploring new diagnostic tools, such as biomarkers, to identify an asymptomatic phase of this disease. Identifying the predictive factors would be a huge step forward for therapeutic research.
Until 2007, the diagnosis of the disease could only be confirmed post mortem, after neuropathological analyzes of the lesions of the brain. The diagnosis, before the post-mortem study, was described as “probable Alzheimer’s disease” and this was mainly made at an advanced stage of the disease. Professor Bruno Dubois and his team have demonstrated that there are today biological signs of the disease which have a good discriminative specificity. By combining data from magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, analyzes of cerebrospinal fluid, and the presence of an amnesic syndrome of the hippocampal type, this disease can be diagnosed with good precision, before the stage of dementia. In addition, the analysis of biomarkers shows that some people carry the lesions without having the clinical signs of the disease. This population could be asymptomatic people at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. The biomarkers would thus allow a diagnosis before the person manifests the symptoms of the disease, which could allow an early and more effective pharmacological treatment.
Sélection d’articles :
- INSIGHT- preAD : Cognitive and neuroimaging features publié dans The Lancet Neurology (février 2018)
- Preclinical Alzheimer’s Disease : definition, natural history and diagnostic criteria, publié dans Alzheimer’s & Dementia (2016)
- « Advancing research diagnostic criteria for Alzheimer’s disease: the IWG-2 criteria » publié dans le Lancet Neurology de juin 2014 (vol. 13).
- Présentation de Bruno Dubois publiée dans le Lancet Neurology.
- Que penser de l’approche médicamenteuse préventive de la maladie d’Alzheimer ? Bulletin de l’Académie de Médecine (2019)
