Specialization
Neurological infectious diseases
Focus of research
AMC Department of Neurology
The Department of Neurology performs clinical and translational research within three research themes: infection & inflammation, cerebrovasculair disorders, and movement disorders. The themes are imbedded in the nine translational research programs of Amsterdam Neuroscience, the research institute of neuroscience investigators in the Amsterdam area. All staff members of the Department of Neurology are involved in research and collaborate within Neuroscience Amsterdam, with other academic and non-academic hospitals, and with international research groups.
Infection & Inflammation
We perform clinical translational research in the field of neurological infections & inflammation. We perform prospective clinical cohort studies, randomized clinical trials, and experimental research, combining our clinical expertise with groundbreaking, translational approaches using clinical data, human samples, next generation sequencing, in vitro techniques, and mouse models in the era's of bacterial meningitis & encephalitis, infections after stroke, septic encephalopathy, and inflammatory diseases of peripheral nerves and muscles.
Dr. Brouwer
The focus of Dr. Brouwer’s research is on neurological infectious diseases, including bacterial meningitis, viral meningitis, chronic meningitis and neuroborreliosis. To this aim he has set up a nation-wide genetic association study on community-acquired bacterial meningitis (MeninGene study) and a study on suspected meningitis and encephalitis patients (PACEM study).
During his PhD Dr. Brouwer studied host genetic factors influencing bacterial meningitis in the nationwide cohort study on culture proven bacterial meningitis. By March 2017, 2300 patients have been included in this ongoing study. With this study we showed that adjunctive dexamethasone has successfully been implemented in the Netherlands, leading to a nationwide reduction of mortality and morbidity of bacterial meningitis. Furthermore, we identified common genetic variants in complement component 3 and 5 that influence susceptibility and outcome of bacterial meningitis. In several translational research projects we used clinical and genetic data to study pathofysiology of bacterial meningitis and identify new adjunctive treatments.