F. Eftimov MD PhD

MD PhD F. Eftimov

Positions

Other Academic Staff, Medical Specialist

Main activities

Patient care, Research

Specialisation

Neurologist, Neuromuscular disorders

Focus of research

 The Department of Neurology performs clinical and translational research within three research themes: infection & inflammation, cerebrovascular disorders, and movement disorders. The themes are imbedded in the nine translational research programs of Amsterdam Neuroscience, the research institute of neuroscience investigators in the Amsterdam area. All staff members of the Department of Neurology are involved in research and collaborate within Neuroscience Amsterdam, with other academic and non-academic hospitals, and with international research groups.
Infection & Inflammation
We perform clinical translational research in the field of neurological infections & inflammation. We perform prospective clinical cohort studies, randomized clinical trials, and experimental research, combining our clinical expertise with groundbreaking, translational approaches using clinical data, human samples, next generation sequencing, in vitro techniques, and mouse models in the era's of bacterial meningitis & encephalitis, infections after stroke, septic encephalopathy, and inflammatory diseases of peripheral nerves and muscles.
Since the completion of my Neurology training in 2012 I have been working as a neurologist, with a special interest in neuromuscular diseases and neuroimmunology. In daily practice, I see patients with all kinds of neuromuscular disease, such as motor neuron disease, myopathies, and neuropathies. My specific area of interest is chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP). Other areas of expertise include myositis, neurological manifestations of sarcoidosis and various inflammatory neuropathies (GBS, MMN, vasculitis). As one of GBS/CIDP Foundation centers of excellence, we seek to improve treatment in CIDP and other inflammatory neuropathies. In 2015 I finished my PhD thesis ‘Treatment of chronic inflammatory neuropathies’. Currently I am combining a translational approach to search for biomarkers of disease activity in CIDP and clinical research that focuses on long-term outcome of the disease. I am the coordinating investigator of a multicenter randomised controlled trial (IOC trial) to study overtreatment with IVIg in CIDP. In recent years I have initiated several CIDP studies and have participated in international randomised controlled trials in CIDP. As one of the initiators of the International CIDP Outcome Study (ICOS) and co-organizer of the European Neuromuscular Center workshop on international standardization of CIDP registries I hope to improve international collaboration and to contribute to discovering new treatments for this rare disease.