The Neurodis Foundation
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The foundation philosophy |
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Sensory, motor, cognitive and psychological disability represents a major and nationally acknowledged public health issue
Every year in France, more than half the stroke victims (70,000 new cases) suffer severe persistent neurologic deficits, generally of a motor or sensory-motor nature. 200,000 patients are affected by Parkinson’s disease, which represents the 2nd main cause of motor disability. These pathologies are very much bound up with aging, as is Alzheimer’s disease, the main cause of cognitive deterioration in the elderly. As life expectancy grows, the search for new means of treating these pathologies and alleviating the disability they engender is thus a major stake in global neuroscience research.
Neurological disability also strikes younger subjects with illnesses that have life-long functional impact. In children, cerebral palsy represents the prime cause of motor disability in France, affecting 2 in 1,000 live births. Infant hearing loss affects 1 live birth in 1,000.
60,000 persons suffer from multiple sclerosis in France, with 2,000 new cases each year. Other neurologic disorders cause early deterioration in quality of life: epilepsy (480,000 patients in France, of whom more than 60% show onset earlier than 18 years of age and 30% resistance to presently available medical management), sleep disorder, and neurologic pain.
And finally, we now know more about the neurobiological mechanisms underlying certain neuro-psychiatric illnesses which cause severe psychological disability, such as schizophrenia, which affects 600,000 people in France.
The Neurodis Foundation goes out to meet these challenges and stands among the top biomedical research priorities in the Rhône-Alpes Region of France.