Dr Ruth Dobson

Dr Ruth Dobson is currently a Clinical Senior Lecturer in the Preventive Neurology Unit at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, QMUL, an Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer at Imperial College 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 awarded an AAN International Scholarship Award for her research. She has over 50 publications in peer reviewed journals. Current research projects are supported by the MS Society, Horne Family Foundation and Barts Charity. She has recently developed and set up an international mentorship scheme for women working in the field of MS, and is a non-executive committee member of international women in MS (iWiMS). 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, in particular bone health. She was recently involved in developing and publishing UK consensus guidelines on pregnancy in MS, and is part of a steering group to develop a UK MS pregnancy register. A further research interest is pharmacovigilance and treatment-associated risk in MS, and she is currently principal investigator on a UK-wide study to examine this further.