Heart patients who maintain a healthy lifestyle can start earning discounts at shops or for trips out. The Tergooi Hospital is the first in the Netherlands to introduce this unique method that was co-developed by the research group headed by Professor of Health Psychology Andrea Evers and the Leiden…

Leiden Professor of Translational Rheumatology Hans Ulrich Scherer has one foot in the clinic, where he helps patients, and the other in the lab, where he supervises researchers. He bridges these two worlds in his hunt for autoimmune rheumatic diseases.

Extremely painful chronic cluster headaches – sometimes referred to as ‘suicide headaches’ – can be prevented by stimulating the occipital nerve in the back of the head, according to research conducted by Professor Emeritus of Neurology Michel Ferrari from Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC). The…

Medical psychologist Willeke Kitselaar developed a model that helps identify patients with persistent somatic symptoms earlier, based on an extensive large medical database. ‘I advise GPs to ask patients to fill in a questionnaire about both physical and mental symptoms at an earlier stage.’ PhD defence…

Early treatment benefits patients who have not fully developed rheumatoid arthritis but are in the preliminary stages of the disease. This is what researchers from the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) have reported in The Lancet. Patients in the pre-arthritis stage who were temporarily prescribed…

Technological innovations such as home dialysis could significantly improve the quality of life and health of kidney patients. Professor Joris Rotmans therefore wants to continue pushing for new medical technology, as he will explain in his inaugural lecture on 24 March.

Adults who were abused or mistreated as a child and consequently suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can benefit greatly from cognitive behavioural therapy. This is the conclusion of a study of 149 patients. Researcher and PhD candidate Chris Hoeboer is hopeful about the results and the…

This project is a collaboration between Sanquin, LUMC and LIACS. It focuses on the development of meta-modelling methods and tools for the exchange, analysis, and publication of anonymised patient data. Measures are being constructed to evaluate both the level of privacy and the extent to which an anonymized…

Source: British Journal of Dermatology, Volume 170, Number 6, pp. E18-E19 (2014) ISBN:0007-0963

Professor of rheumatology Annette van der Helm focuses her research on the earliest possible detection of inflammatory joint rheumatism to prevent symptoms from becoming chronic.

The doctor suggests opting for a treatment that is better for the environment. How do patients react to this? Doctors and psychologists together discovered that this has little impact on patient confidence in the doctor.

This study focuses on increasing our understanding of the different pathways converts take during conversion to Islam.

Coen van Hasselt's research group quickly produced an app that enables doctors to determine the correct dosage of commonly used medicines for corona patients. Media in the Netherlands and abroad reported on the app.

Doctors are there to diagnose and treat people. But sometimes a diagnosis can’t be made or doctors differ in opinion. Luckily, Alireza Mashaghi Tabari and his research team have developed a new framework to solve medical diagnostic problems. This framework can also be applied to many other research…

This thesis describes the structural and biochemical characterization of the β-lactamase BlaC from Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), and the Alr and YlmE proteins from Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2).Mtb is the main cause of tuberculosis.

Care conferences for long-term residents (15+ years) in forensic mental health care are widely appreciated by all parties involved. Research by Leiden University shows that the demand for these meetings is so great that the supply cannot be met within the desired time frame.

Spatial technology such as virtual reality can help patients who have difficulty with spatial cognition, for instance if they keep on losing their way. In her inaugural lecture, neuropsychologist Ineke van der Ham will talk about the importance of avatars, the patient experience and room for innovat…

A new app is able to calculate personalised survival probabilities for patients suffering from soft tissue sarcoma. Doctors and patients can use the app to calculate personalised survival probabilities together. Mathematician Anja Rüten-Budde received her doctorate for her research into survival probability…

Providing each cancer patient with the right treatment remains a challenge. Oncode Accelerator aims to change this by innovating the way we develop cancer treatments, thus ensuring the patient is at the heart of the process.

The Center for Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies Leiden (IPS) aims to advance the understanding of placebo and nocebo effects, their underlying mechanisms, and their potential applications in clinical practice. IPS consists of a group of interdisciplinary researchers working at Leiden University with…

Agrobacterium tumefaciens, a gram-negative plant pathogen belonging to the family Rhizobiaceae, is the causative agent of crown gall disease, which can affect many plant species including agronomically important ones.

On 7 July 2020 medical lecturer Luuk Willems received his SKO certificate (Senior Teaching Qualification) and may now officially call himself a senior lecturer. The course has meant that he now has clear ideas about what he wants to achieve in his teaching. ‘I want to strengthen my role as a coach and…

Researchers and clinicians at Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) are about to begin a milestone clinical study. It will be the first time a stem cell gene therapy developed in the Netherlands is used in a clinic. The therapy will be used to treat children with SCID, a rare disorder where children…

Childhood trauma can have a lifelong effect. Many therapists do not dare to confront these vulnerable patients with their past because they are concerned that the patients will be unable to cope. Research has now shown that exposure therapy can be helpful for this group of people.

Researchers from the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) have successfully used stem cell gene therapy to treat a baby with the severe congenital immune disorder SCID. An important milestone: it is the first time stem cell gene therapy of Dutch origin has been administered to a patient, and also…

Psychology students usually only get to meet patients very late in their studies. Therefore, neuroscientists Ineke van der Ham and Judith Schomaker want to research whether students learn more effectively from a virtual experience with a patient with dementia than from a text. Schomaker: 'We have plans…

The LUMC has become the first institution in the Netherlands to treat a patient with an autoimmune disease using CAR T-cell therapy.

Funded by a ZonMw grant, the LUMC and the Health Campus The Hague will be working with headache patients on research into the use of an electronic headache diary. This resource can help patients gain a better understanding of their migraine attacks and, together with the physician, produce the best…

Transferring poo from healthy donors to the intestines of chronically ill people has beneficial effects on these recipients’ gut bacteria, also in the longer term. This is the conclusion of research by the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and the Netherlands Donor Feces Bank (NDFB).

People with intermittent arterial claudication often experience severe pain when walking. Psychologist Anne Cuperus used virtual reality to trick 20 patients, and discovered that they could suddenly walk much further. PhD defence on 10 December.

Migraine can’t be diagnosed with a blood test, scan or physical examination. Language therefore plays a crucial role in its diagnosis. Neurologist Joost Haan has researched the relationship between language and migraine, and looked at how migraine is described in fiction. His PhD defence is on 22 Oc…

The rise of AI will transform the role of doctors, claims Professor of Intensive Care Medicine Sesmu Arbous. Her academic chair focuses on integrating technology into patient care.

Professor of Radiology Lioe-Fee de Geus-Oei was already a professor at LUMC and the University of Twente. As Medical Delta professor, she has now also been appointed at Delft University of Technology. 'Talking with people from other disciplines always makes me immensely humble, because they look at…

Leiden researcher Anne-Grete Märtson brought together a large number of studies to better understand antibiotic dosing in patients with obesity. The publication in a renowned medical journal has already garnered much positive reactions, Märtson says. ‘It’s high time researchers started sharing more…

There’s a lot that goes wrong in the treatment of patients with PTSD caused by childhood trauma. Endowed professor Maartje Schoorl wants to resolve this by bringing scientific research closer to the practice. Inaugural lecture on Friday 29 April.

How do you behave towards patients with life-threatening conditions who do not want to know all the details of the state of their health? This question brought psychologist Liesbeth van Vliet and anthropologist Annemarie Samuels together. It’s an unusual partnership, but their interdisciplinary approach…

We are pleased to announce a call for papers for a conference focused on ethical practices in medical research and treatment in the colonial and postcolonial context.

Source: Journal of Investigative Dermatology, Volume 135, pp. S59-S59 (2015)

With the aid of artificial intelligence (AI), care professionals at the LUMC (Leiden University Medical Center) are able to calculate quickly and accurately whether a coronavirus patient has suffered serious lung damage. They do this by putting a CT scan through the AI software of the CAD4COVID-CT p…

As a doctor, coming to a decision together with a patient: how do you do that in the best possible way? Researchers Geert Warnar and Roosmaryn Pilgram, who jointly teach a course within the MA in Dutch Studies, are entering into a virtual collaboration with the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa to find the…

An MRI scanner is much more than a machine alone. It is an extremely versatile technique that provides numerous opportunities for finding out more about the workings of the human brain, says Thijs van Osch, Professor of Radiology, with a particular emphasis on experimental cerebrovascular imaging. Inaugural…

Leiden University is involved in five new NWO Gravitation projects. Two relate to mental disorder and the remaining three to a healthy lifestyle, the combination of human and artificial intelligence, and the special relationship between plants and microbes.

The BENEFIT programme is a public-private ecosystem in a national consortium, aiming to support patients with cardiovascular diseases in their own home setting for a long-term healthy lifestyle.

This project investigates ethnographically how patients, their relatives, and healthcare professionals in the Netherlands make decisions about end-of-life care. We study the new dilemmas around what constitutes

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The ambition of the Metabolomics and Analytics Centre led by Thomas Hankemeier is to develop innovative analytical strategies for metabolomics-driven health monitoring and systems biology studies. Understanding the intricate balance between health, disease and adaptation to challenges relies on the…

Dialysis patients experience a range of physical and mental symptoms that interact and influence each otherIn her doctoral research, psychologist Judith Tommel wanted to find the optimum approach to help these dialysis patients improve their quality of life. ‘We need to make sure we avoid excluding…