The European Academy of Neurology has published a strategic neurological research agenda as a position paper in the European Journal of Neurology, to address current gaps and set priority areas for new clinically relevant research.
Neurological disorders affect over 30% of the world population, and, consequently, create a significant global health challenge and a massive burden to health systems. The level of awareness of this high burden of neurological diseases is still insufficient among health care professionals, academics, researchers, politicians, civil servants (in particular, ministries of health), industry, and the general public, which results in neurological care, neurological education, and the need for brain research being greatly undervalued and underfunded. Despite this, there has been a lack of a European neurological research agenda to tackle this issue.
A working group from the European Academy of Neurology did a scoping literature review that revealed the absence of a unified, overarching brain research agenda. Existing research agendas predominantly focus on specialised topics within neurology, resulting in an imbalance in the number of agendas across subspecialties. Subsequently, EAN conducted a specialised survey among all EAN scientific panels, including neurologists and patients, inquiring about their perspectives on the current research priorities and gaps in neurology.
Three research priorities were derived from the EAN survey: Treatment of neurological disease, Neuroinflammation in the area of common neurological diseases, and Neurogenetic diseases in the area of rare neurological diseases.
The literature review, in combination with the survey, forms the basis for setting up a first comprehensive and specific neurological research agenda in Europe: A strategic neurological research agenda for Europe: Towards clinically relevant and patient-centred neurological research priorities, which is available online, as a position paper in the European Journal of Neurology. This study focuses specifically on gaps within neurological care and on the impact of neurological disorders at the level of public health determined mainly by clinicians and scientists, as well as patient organisations and their representatives. This study does not aim to determine the epidemiological scale of the burden and economic costs of neurological diseases, as these are the topic of other scientific studies supported by the EAN. The agenda does, however, aim to unify research objectives, increase awareness of neurological diseases, and serve as a guide for researchers, clinicians, and funding agencies in neurology.
