Hydrocephalus presents significant challenges, and treatment typically involves brain surgery and shunts. However, shunts have one of the highest failure rates among medical devices, leading to tens of thousands of hospital admissions for shunt failures annually. Since there is no drug treatment currently available for hydrocephalus, the only treatment options are all invasive. To improve care and quality of life, our top Community Research Priorities is to develop non-invasive treatments for hydrocephalus (e.g. a drug or gene therapy).
We organized two research workshops dedicated to advancing non-invasive hydrocephalus treatments, collaborating with scientists, clinicians, patients, funding agencies, and industry representatives. From these workshops, we published Research priorities for non-invasive therapies to improve hydrocephalus outcomes in the journal Fluids and Barriers of the CNS. This work emphasizes our commitment to accelerating progress towards finding safer and more effective treatments for those living with hydrocephalus.
The topics below represent important areas of research in order to create non-invasive treatments for hydrocephalus
Theme 1: Determine how cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) works in the brain to create treatments
Develop research models to understand the roles of CSF in the brain.
Theme 2: Use existing data to identify hydrocephalus treatment targets
Understand the effects of hydrocephalus across the population through the use of large patient datasets.
Theme 3: Design preclinical (animal and cell) studies that can move into human studies
Focus efforts on advancing research into clinical trials.