AGE Research Group welcomes Luis de Miranda visit

AGE Research Group members welcomed Dr Luis de Miranda this week as part of a UK visit from Brazil. Luis is a geriatrician based in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais province who also holds an adjunct professorial post at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. As well as teaching medicine and medical ethics, Luis has research interests that include sarcopenia and cognition in chronic Chagas’ disease and the treatment of dementia.

Luis spent the day visiting our NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre offices, took a tour of the Clinical Ageing Research Unit (part of our NIHR Newcastle Clinical Research Facility), met our AGE Research Group team for discussions on areas of common interest around research and clinical practice, and delivered a short talk over lunch to the group.

Luis’s talk covered his current research which seeks to understand the prevalence and mechanisms that underpin sarcopenia and cognitive impairment in patients with heart failure. Many of the people in the study have heart failure due to Chagas’ disease, a chronic, incurable parasitic infection that is present in many South American countries. Sufferers may be unaware of their infection for decades until symptoms of heart failure occur, and there has been little work to date on impairment of muscle or brain function in this condition that may affect people in older age.

Luis has family connections in the UK and we hope to continue the discussions and collaboration in future – everyone in the group learned something about a condition that we do not see in the UK, but also about geriatric medicine in Brazil. We wish Luis a safe journey back home after he concludes his conference attendance in London!

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