The Infection Neuroscience Lab (INL) is based at the Clinical Sciences Centre at Aintree Hospital, working at the intersection between Neuroscience and Infection.

The INL is led by Professor Benedict Michael, Professor of Neuroscience and MRC Clinician Scientist at The NIHR Health Protection Research Unit for Emerging and Zoonotic Infection and an Honorary Consultant Neurologist at The Walton Centre. 

As a group, we are interested in working collectively, using our different medical specialities and skill sets, to understand the impact of  infection on the brain, not just clinically, but also at an immunological, virologic, genetic, and neuroimaging level. Find out more about the INL team.

The Lab are currently researching about the clinical features and biological mechanisms of COVID-19 on the brain. The COVID-Clinical Neuroscience Study (COVID-CNS) has identified that even in young patients with COVID-19 strokes, potentially treatable risk factors, including hypertension and diabetes are key (Brain Comms 2021). We also identified the impact of ethnicity on CNS complications in children and adolescents (Lancet Child Adolesc Health). 

Working with the WHO, our finding that a quarter of patients are asymptomatic for COVID-19 and a further quarter have recovered from COVID-19 symptoms, informed the WHO Screening Checklist and the Scientific Brief. At the WHO Global Brain Health Clinical Exchange Platform, we disseminate emergent observations and guidance to physicians in more than 80 countries. Global connectivity has advanced data assimilation but requires internationally agreed approaches. With the WHO and World Federation of Neurology the INL are leading the global inter-observer study to validate both case definitions and neurological assessments performed by non-clinicians, who are the backbone of health care in LMICs.

 

          

Read our blog about Summer Studentships in the Infection Neuroscience Lab where the lab hosted three undergraduate students for a six week Summer Research Studentship.