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Ramsay Hospital Research Foundation awards $750,000 grant to Neuropsychiatry team

October 06, 2022

The Ramsay Hospital Research Foundation (RHRF) has awarded The Royal Melbourne Hospital’s (RMH) Neuropsychiatry team $750,000 for research into the clinical utility of the brain protein neurofilament light in people with mood and anxiety disorders.

This novel work will be in collaboration with Ramsay Health Care psychiatrists Professor Malcolm Hopwood (Ramsay Clinic Albert Road) and Professor Philip Mitchell (Ramsay Clinic Northside).

“Accurate diagnosis in mental health is a key part in improving our care,” said Professor Hopwood.

“This research explores a real opportunity to identify those patients with depression and brain injury or neurodegeneration earlier and avoid unhelpful or inappropriate treatment.

“Research partnerships like this one are clearly the way to progress and its great the RHRF have provided this opportunity.”

The project led by RMH clinical director of Neuropsychiatry Professor, Dennis Velakoulis, is aimed at developing a blood test to help distinguish neurological and neurodegenerative illnesses from psychiatric illnesses.

The MiND program of research aims to identify whether a blood marker called neurofilament light (NfL) can help address this important question. Neurofilament light is a brain cell protein which maintains the structure of brain cells and is released into the cerebrospinal fluid and blood when a brain cell is damaged.

"When we see it elevated in the spinal fluid or blood, it indicates that there's been some brain injury and the brain cells have died,” Prof Velakoulis said.

Crucially, the levels of neurofilament light is not elevated in patients with mental illness, meaning this test could differentiate between those people with mental health disorders and those with neurological disorders such as dementia.

“The main aim of this work is to reduce the time taken to diagnosis dementia. People who have dementia in middle age will often have seen their doctors with depression, anxiety or other mental health disorders years before the diagnosis of dementia is made.

“A test such as neurofilament light may help in the earlier detection of dementia, could reduce the need for unnecessary expensive and time-consuming investigations, and improve outcomes for patients and their families,” Prof Velakoulis said.

Challenges to the translation of biomarkers into clinical practice have been their high cost, patient access and reliance on invasive techniques. Blood-based biomarkers don’t require invasive techniques or costly equipment.

Chief Investigator, Research Fellow and Neuropsychiatrist at the RMH, Dr Dhamidhu Eratne, says having a test so widely available to general practitioners and specialists will dramatically alter clinical care.

“In the same way a General Practitioner performs simple blood tests such as thyroid function tests to exclude thyroid problems as a cause for depression or cognitive symptoms, a blood NfL test could alert the GP to a neurological or neurodegenerative cause, rather than a primary psychiatric illness,” Dr Eratne said.

The RHRF grant will allow the Neuropsychiatry team’s work to extend into the private setting through the mood and anxiety disorders programs at Ramsay Clinic Albert Road Clinic and Ramsay Clinic Northside.

For more information on the MiND study read more here: www.themindstudy.org

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