Claudia Trenkwalder: From bench to bedside (and back again)

摘要

A few months into her neurology fellowship at the Ludwig-Maximilian University Hospital in her native Munich, Germany, Claudia Trenkwalder was told by a senior colleague to abandon any hopes of a research career in neurology. It was a man's field, he had told her, and she should focus on less demanding tasks. Sat at her desk, 25 years on, as the Clinical Director of the Centre of Parkinsonism and Movement Disorders at the Paracelsus-Elena Klinik in Kassel, Germany, a pioneer in the treatment of restless legs syndrome, and the president of the World Association of Sleep Medicine (WASM), she can afford a wry chuckle at her ex-colleague's misguided advice. "Oh, he made me so angry", she tells The Lancet Neurology, "but I used it as a sort of career-defining moment for many, many years." Unperturbed, Trenkwalder continued her studies, and 2 months later was persuaded by Wolfgang Oertel-a world-renowned Parkinson's disease specialist-to join him in his Parkinson's research department. It was under Oertel's tutelage at Ludwig-Maximilian Hospital that another, more fondly remembered career-defining moment occurred.