Adolf Struempell Prize Winner 2024: Lotte van de Venis

Euro-HSP is pleased to announce that the Adolf Struempell Prize 2024 will be awarded to Mrs. Lotte van the Venis from the Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands for her Paper entitled “Gait-Adaptability Training in People With Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia: A Randomized Clinical Trial,” Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair 27 (2023), link. The prize will be presented at the Tom Wahlig Symposium in Erlangen, Germany on March 8.

The paper was selected from six submissions based on the scores of an international expert jury. Euro-HSP wants to thank the winner for accomplishing important work. It was often requested, but remained rare – a systematic randomized clinical trial on a symptomatic treatment attempt in a large cohort of patients with pure HSP. The results suggest, that supporting normal physiotherapy by C-Mill training – a treadmill equipped with augmented reality – has an additional moderate positive effect on balance and gait. From the viewpoint of Euro-HSP, it confirms the importance of physiotherapy in pure HSP and provides an option for moderate improvements. However, based on the findings the need for future causal therapy becomes evident.

We thank the Tom Wahlig Foundation for the excellent co-operation and the opportunity to present the prize on their symposium.