Welcome to the CADASIL website; a resource for those diagnosed with CADASIL, their relatives and carers. As CADASIL is a rare condition, little reliable information is available on the internet. On this website we hope to be able to provide up-to-date and accurate information. We hope that the website will expand over the coming months and years and would welcome input from patients and family members. In addition to providing useful information for CADASIL patients and relatives we also supply links to other websites where more information can be found.
The information on this website has been primarily provided by Professor Hugh Markus, Professor of Stroke Medicine at the University of Cambridge and Consultant Neurologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge and by Glen Brice, Genetic Counsellor from the Clinical Genetics Department at St George's Hospital, London. Together, we have been involved in caring for CADASIL sufferers and their families for many years and have a wide range of experience in dealing with the problems associated with the condition.
As with any medical condition, we do rely on hearing the experiences of patients and family members in order to develop new services which better cater to the needs of those affected. If you have any suggestions for improvement to the website or new sections which you think we should add, please do contact us.
Due to popular demand the Online Cambridge CADASIL Meeting was held for it's fifth year. For the second year running it was held online due to COVID restrictions.
The good news is that this meant that CADASIL patients and families were able to join us from around the world!
The 2020 programme is available here.
If you would like to re-watch any of the talks, or were unable to join us on the day, you can find recordings of the meeting here.
New European Academy of Neurology Guidelines
The European Academy of Neurology has recently published recommendations for the diagnosis and treatment of familial diseases affecting the small blood vessels in the brain including CADASIL. A group of experts including patient representatives met together to produce these guidelines which provide useful information on how to diagnose and treat CADASIL and other similar diseases.
The guidelines are available here, and Professor Hugh Markus outlines some of the points covered in the guidelines in a video which can be accessed by the following link.
The Association of British Neurologists has provided some advice for patients with neurological disease, which applies to CADASIL and can be accessed here. They will continue to update it on their website via this link.
If you have questions we will always do our best to reply via the info CADASIL email (info@cambridgestroke.com).
With best wishes and we hope you do stay safe
The Cambridge CADASIL team
The third highly successful CADASIL meeting was held on Monday 10th June at the Clifford Allbutt Building Lecture Theatre at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. The first session focused on the cognitive and behavioural aspects of CADASIL with a guest talk from neuropsychologist Alexa McDonald featuring discussing highly useful strategies for coping with these problems, and a presentation from medical student Sam Moore highlighted our increasing understanding of the problem of fatigue in CADASIL and the need for future research.
Professor Markus and Jessica Walsh gave an update about ongoing research work, before CADASIL Support UK trustees Karen and Chops Carter gave talks about the stages of coming to terms with CADASIL and the excellent work of the charity. The final session included a discussion by genetic counsellor Heather Pierce about if and when an unaffected family member should be tested, disspelling some of the myths about testing. Phil Jones gave a personal and very well-received talk about his experience with CADASIL and the insights gained from tracing the family tree back several generations.
For further details on our event and to download the slides, please click here.
We would like to take the opportunity to remind you that anyone who is interested in participating in our research (either as a CADASIL patient or as a healthy volunteer) would be very welcome to get in touch. If you would like to sign-up to be contacted about research, then please let Amy Jolly know by emailing aj602@medschl.cam.ac.uk or phoning 01223 216 377.