The Clinical and Educational Core (Core B) of this Udall Center grant application will have two primary functions: 1) To recruit patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and normal control subjects for the Udall Center's projects;and 2) To conduct educational and community outreach programs on the subjects of PD, Parkinson's disease with dementia (PDD) and dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB). The Clinical and Education Core will draw research participants from clinics that provide care to over 2,500 patients with PD. The primary source of subjects will be the University of Pennsylvania Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders Center (PD&MDC). Other sources of subjects include the Philadelphia Veterans Hospital Parkinson's Disease Research, Education and Clinical Center (PADRECC) and the American Parkinson's Disease Association (APDA) Center at Crozier-Chester Medical Center and other clinics in the University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS). Patients and controls will consent to detailed clinical and neuropsychological evaluations and will be asked to donate blood, urine and cerebro- spinal fluid, as well as brain tissue upon their death, to advance the goals of the Udall Center, including the identification of potential biomarkers (e.g. peripheral biochemical analytes and genetic markers in blood and urine as well as CSF tau and isoprostanes) of PD-related neurodegeneration. The educational component of Core B will be implemented through outreach to the community through programs modeled on successful examples conducted by the PD&MDC and new outreach to the minority and underserved populations of the city of Philadelphia. Collaboration with organizations currently connected to the PD&MDC, particularly the local Parkinson's Disease Council, the Dan Aaron Parkinson Disease Foundation, and a large network of patient and family PD support groups already engaged in outreach, will support this effort. Physician education will take two forms: 1) lectures and symposia offered to practicing physicians and other healthcare providers on the diagnosis and management of parkinsonism and cognitive disorders;and 2) training of a series of at least 3 movement disorders research fellows who will participate in the Udall Center's core activities .and projects. An additional function of Core B will be to work with the Data Management/Biostatistics Core D to establish a comprehensive and standardized clinical database. This database will be the repository for all data on patients participating in the Udall center in a format designed to facilitate sharing of data with similar clinical databases created by other Udall centers under the auspices of the recently funded PD Data Organizing Center (PD-DOC) as part of the NINDS Udall Center Program.
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