Dr Ruth Dobson

speaker biog

Dr Ruth Dobson

Ruth is currently a Clinical Senior Lecturer in the Preventive Neurology Unit at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, QMUL, and an Honorary Consultant Neurologist at Barts Health NHS Trust. She studied medicine at Clare College, Cambridge and UCL, before completing medical and neurology training in London, Birmingham and Sussex.

She completed her PhD in 2013, which examined the genetic and environmental determinants of MS risk. This was supported by an ABN/MS Society Clinical Research Training Fellowship and a Brain Entry Scholarship. She was also awarded an AAN International Scholarship Award for her research. Her current research projects are supported by the MS Society and Barts Charity. She has over 50 publications in peer reviewed journals.

Her main research interests are around the early identification and epidemiology of multiple sclerosis, with a particular focus on genetic and environmental risk factors including Epstein Barr virus infection and vitamin D. She is also working on how these may affect downstream morbidity in MS, with a particular focus on bone health. In addition to this, she was recently involved in developing UK consensus guidelines on pregnancy in MS, and is currently working as part of a group of neurologists in developing this area from both clinical and research aspects. A further research interest is pharmacovigilance and treatment-associated risk in MS, and she is currently setting up a UK-wide study to examine this further.

She has authored more than 50 articles indexed on PubMed and has supervised several Ph. D students. She is a member of several national and international scientific committees and a fellow of the European Academy of Neurology.