Meike Kasten, MD has been awarded the Michael J. Fox Foundation Research Fellowship in the Clinical Research department of The Parkinson's Institute under the direction of Caroline M. Tanner, MD, Ph.D. Dr. Kasten will participate in field evaluations of two large NIH-funded studies investigating the etiologic factors contributing to Parkinson's disease. Further, she will lay particular interest on assessment of disease related factors as sleep disturbances, depression, psychotic symptoms and their impact on the patient's quality of life.
After receiving the medical degree of the University of Bochum (Germany) Dr. Kasten completed an internship in Neurology at the University of Luebeck (Germany) including a six-months rotation in general neurology, and twelve months of clinical research. During the eighteen months she participated in the movement disorders outpatient clinic (diagnostics and therapy, including the botulinum toxin clinic). During the twelve months of clinical research under the direction of Christine Klein, MD, she was recruiting patients for the PD sib-pair study led by Prof. Richard Myers, BU, Boston, USA, and was involved in the German Competence Network for Parkinson's Disease (recruiting patients and relatives) and the associated Gene Bank and Brainnet projects. Furthermore, she was taking part in a large fMRI study on patients with monogenic parkinsonism and in an epidemiological and genetic study on dyskinesias in patients with neuroleptic-induced movement disorders. In addition, Dr. Kasten was subinvestigator in a drug trial (sarizotan for treatment of dyskinesias in Parkinson patients) and carried out all investigations and ratings under the supervision of the local movement disorders group.